Ugh, I don't understand how Grove.io can just drift apart like that. Surely Grove's costs were relatively low, and my impression was that there was a significant level of uptake.
> "..our team has moved on to other projects.."
So, unprofitable, or just not the next Facebook? Is there really no one that is happy to keep the service ticking along?
I feel like there is a pretty significant problem with tech startups, where everyone is so busy trying to be the next big thing, that everything else is dropped and abandoned in that pursuit.
2) why not look for someone to take it over and run it?
I also have a hard time seeing how something like this could be at the very least not break-even (unless they had less than 10 paying customers or something).
That's a weak answer. Just put it out there, let other people maintain it.
Not that I'm saying they have to release it (I respect their right to do whatever they want with their own work), but as far as reasons to not release something, that's pretty weak.
I reached out to Leah with the same questions, but in lieu of a response I spent a few minutes setting up a replacement that is both an IRC server and a hosted web client: https://github.com/LocalSense/hosted-irc
I'll hack on it a bit more tonight, but it shouldn't be too difficult to replicate what Grove.io does.
We're actually using a forked version of Subway for the UI. Our package also includes an IRC server as well, as it aims to be a complete Grove replacement.
FWIW, I was a paying customer. I know others who were as well. Most everyone I know, including myself as of two weeks ago, has stopped paying for the service. It had gone downhill to the point of being unusable.
There is a demand for this type of service. Real-time chat is in extremely high demand still. Chat was the number one requested feature a "build-you-own" social network startup I worked at a handful of years ago even before Facebook added their chat.
We started using grove on a large client back in February / March and as of this month we are still paying clients. We started trying out flowdoc recently but we are trying out a few options between now and October. Outages aside, our clients liked the product.
Moving our team off of Grove was a bigger pain then dealing with the sporadic mini-outages so we put up with it longer then smaller teams or most companies. We really liked the feature set but just needed the product to be more stable. The writing has been on the wall for a few months as doing a twitter search will show the lack of a response for a few months now.
If they're shutting it down because it isn't sustainable, that's fine, I don't expect them to run the service as a charity (we have freenode for that!) - but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Someone should start a "start-up adoption" program. Facilitate others adopting projects when the owners want to move on, but the viability is still contentious
>Revenues that had peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983,[1] fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent).
It would be extremely unwise to believe the startup industry couldn't be subject to the same problem. VCs are getting uncomfortable with the valuations, the constant buyouts and abandonment are burning out consumers.
Were I not working on a startup of my own, I'd be happy to take upon somebody's profitable but small red-headed stepchild business.
> "..our team has moved on to other projects.."
So, unprofitable, or just not the next Facebook? Is there really no one that is happy to keep the service ticking along?
I feel like there is a pretty significant problem with tech startups, where everyone is so busy trying to be the next big thing, that everything else is dropped and abandoned in that pursuit.