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Gumroad’s source is available

486 points| philipjoubert | 11 months ago |github.com

205 comments

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jvns|11 months ago

I tried to grep the code for `api.` to get a sense for all the vendors this codebase is using, and which you'd need to have relationships with to run the code. Here's what I found:

payments:

  https://api.paypal.com 
  https://api.stripe.com
tax stuff:

  https://api.taxjar.com
  https://api.vatstack.com (EU VAT)
  https://apiservices.iras.gov.sg
for iOS app (?):

  https://api.appstoreconnect.apple.com 
  https://api.storekit.itunes.apple
AI stuff:

  https://api.iffy.com  (AI content moderation)
  https://api.helper.ai (AI support)
  https://api.openai.com
other:

  https://api.easypost.com  (shipping labels?)
  https://api.sendgrid.com (email)
  https://api.pwnedpasswords.com (haveibeenpwned)
  https://api.worldbank.org (for purchasing power parity?)
  https://api.dropboxapi.com (for "upload from dropbox"?)

ricardobeat|11 months ago

That's pretty refreshing compared to the average 400 external "partners" your average online t-shirt store has.

rmason|11 months ago

It launched right here on HN 14 years ago.

https://x.com/shl/status/1908090697984426227/photo/1

Aurornis|11 months ago

Gumroad became my cautionary tale for startup equity for early engineers.

I remember excitedly following the story from start. It was fun to follow along. Then around 2015 things weren’t working well, so they laid off most of the team. Investors sold the company back to the founder at a steep discount. As I recall, a major investor sold their ownership for $1.

Just like that, the founding engineers who worked so hard lost their jobs and saw their equity valued down to nothing.

It happens! However, the strange thing in this case was that the company kept going. They had laid (almost) everyone off and declared their equity worthless, yet the company was still making money and growing. My younger self struggled to understand how the founding engineers could have gone from working so hard on something to being laid off and seeing their equity wiped out while the business itself continued right on working and generating revenue.

A lot has been written to put positive spin on those events. The founder claims to have helped out some of the early engineers in vague ways. However, I’ll never forget being a young, aspiring startup engineer and watching an entire startup team get wiped out of the business they helped create and then the business just kept on trucking for the founder who walked away with ownership of the company.

Multiplayer|11 months ago

I'm reading a lot of complaints here but let's recognize some interesting aspects that Sahil is talking about: 1. It's the 5th largest rails codebase open to AI ingestion. 2. They are offering bounties for issues. Not large bounties but whatever, it's something.

I personally like rails and would love to see AI tools improve with it. No idea if this code base will really help that, and when but it can't hurt. In my experience I can get next apps up in a jiffy but rails is much more of a struggle. If anyone has any tips here, please post.

I'm always curious about how well bounties work especially now in an AI age. I wonder what the arbitrage on AI spend vs. bounty will be for people that take a run at them.

irf1|11 months ago

I run a bounties platform (https://algora.io) and I've seen people who create bounties try to use some AI like Devin to solve them (@seveibar livestreamed trying it) just for fun and in all cases AI failed to solve the bounties.

A Rust project that rewarded 300+ bounties ($37k) is now building an AI coding agent with the aim to solve bounties on Algora - it's an interesting benchmark I guess.

Curious myself what the next years might look like, but from everything I've seen so far we're definitely not there yet.

Imustaskforhelp|11 months ago

Dear SHL , Please truly open source this. I personally wouldn't mind AGPL but would still much prefer MIT Thanks.

echelon|11 months ago

There's no way he's going to do that. The leverage and market advantage would evaporate.

fbn79|11 months ago

License is very limiting for Business

arielcostas|11 months ago

Yeah, it's more of a "source available" than Open Source in its definition. I'd rather they use AGPL or something like that.

captn3m0|11 months ago

> You may use the software under this license only if (1) your company has less than 1 million USD (2024) total revenue in the prior tax year, and less than 10 million USD (2024) GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), or (2) you are a non-profit organization or government entity. Adjust the revenue threshold for inflation according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer price index for all urban consumers, U.S. city average, for all items, not seasonally adjusted, 1982–1984=100 reference base.

WhyNotHugo|11 months ago

Even more so for individuals.

ZeroTalent|11 months ago

Use the source as inspiration and create something new in a more modern language/framework.

Timshel|11 months ago

While limiting, it's not atrocious:

>You may use the software under this license only if (1) your company has less than 1 million USD (2024) total revenue in the prior tax year, and less than 10 million USD (2024) GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), or (2) you are a non-profit organization or government entity.

_joel|11 months ago

An ecommerce platform designed to allow creators to sell to users.. apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumroad

soco|11 months ago

Which also dropped Android support, so I dropped them.

shipscode|11 months ago

It's pretty cool that this license allows you to make up to $1mm revenue, at which point you can pivot and rebuild the stack. This is going to be a game changer for anybody who wants to MVP an app similar to Gumroad. MIT would be ideal, but I prefer this to GPL's force release model.

noname120|11 months ago

Any idea what the motivation could be?

verghese|11 months ago

Gumroad's journey has been interesting: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting -> Billion dollar journey with VC backing to Kleiner selling back their stake to Gumroad for $1, which enabled Sahil to steer the company in a different direction.

Perhaps the shift to making the source available has more to do with work culture: https://sahillavingia.com/work

jslakro|11 months ago

Sahil anticipates AI will significantly commoditize software. Especially following DeepSeek's impact. He has promoted Devin via twitter and likely aims to position Gumroad as the leading creator-focused alternative to traditional Open Source e-commerce platforms.

turnsout|11 months ago

I looked for a blog post announcing this, and couldn't find it. But Antiwork's Github profile mentions:

  > Antiwork emerged from Gumroad's mission to automate repetitive tasks. In 2025, we're taking a bold step by open-sourcing our entire suite of tools that helped run and scale Gumroad. We believe in making powerful automation accessible to everyone.
That's pretty wild! I've always loved Gumroad's simplicity for creators and buyers. Now I guess people will have a pretty compelling option when searching "Gumroad open source alternative"

ge96|11 months ago

Here I was thinking it was the subreddit

Brosper|11 months ago

it's basicly free development

psnehanshu|11 months ago

It's Rails!

niklasbabel|11 months ago

i believe Sahil mentioned they’re moving away from Rails soon, as he sees it as technical debt.

itsthecourier|11 months ago

004_constants.rb: =====================

DENYLIST = %w[ ... ladygaga kanye kanyewest randyjackson mariahcarey atrak deadmau5 avicii prettylights justinbieber calvinharris katyperry rihanna shakira barackobama kimkardashian taylorswift taylorswift13 nickiminaj oprah jtimberlake theellenshow ellen selenagomez kaka ....].freeze

the who is who of pop culture

prakashn27|11 months ago

What is the use of this opensurce when you have a strict license ?

DetroitThrow|11 months ago

It's a careless and sloppy marketing job by someone who wants to reframe the definition of open source for the millionth time, unfortunately.

udev4096|11 months ago

What a joke of a license. This is not open source. Why the fuck is everyone in VC land trying to change the true definition of open source?

XCSme|11 months ago

Most of the VC open-source projects use open-source as a lead magnet/marketing tactic only, with no intention or desire of wanting people to actually use the software.

graypegg|11 months ago

    The licensor grants you a copyright license for the software to do everything you might do with the software that would otherwise infringe the licensor's copyright, but only as long as you meet all the conditions below.
Am I going insane, or is there a reading of this that seems to imply you can use the software, to infringe on ANY work Gumroad has created? "...grants you a copyright license for the software" seems to imply it's talking about this software license only, but the second part mentions "licensor's copyright" which seems to not be defined, nor bounded. There's no mention of a copyright *for the software*... just the copyright license to use the software that allows you to infringe all copyrights from Gumroad.

I think they probably meant

    The licensor grants you a copyright license for the software to do everything you might do with the software that would otherwise infringe the licensor's copyright [to the software], but only as long as you meet all the conditions below.
I wonder if you can just reuse text or images from their corporate website as long as you personally make less than 1M$ a year, use their software and don't infringe their trademarks.

Awful license on multiple levels.

pseudalopex|11 months ago

> Why the fuck is everyone in VC land trying to change the true definition of open source?

They want the marketing benefits without the costs.

jhanschoo|11 months ago

I think this reaction is misdirected. Yes, the license is restrictive, but Gumroad doesn't seem to be claiming themselves that the code is open source. I think OP made a mistake out of ignorance and said that it was open source.

michaelcampbell|11 months ago

Money; the same reason everyone in VC land does anything.

openthc|11 months ago

Which is super bullshit; cause now offering open source solutions many folk see it as a trick!

tempfile|11 months ago

The definition of open source is itself a corruption of free software which came before it, and was corrupted by the same people.

hankchinaski|11 months ago

I don’t get the point on going open source aside from a tiny boost in marketing. What is the objective and proposition here? Considering as others have said is not really open source. If I were the founder I would not do that. It’s like if Airbnb went open source or something

insane_dreamer|11 months ago

The value of AirBNB is not in its code but in its network.

TylerLives|11 months ago

I haven't followed Gumroad much, but I remember them being very pro freedom and having some interesting hiring practices. IIRC they were all being paid equally (based on position and hours of work) and had no meetings. Now I see a Code of Conduct.

rchaud|11 months ago

They've also bumped up their fees enormously, it's 10% + processing fee now, previously it was $1 flat + processing.

quest88|11 months ago

Wow, I remember their offices next to Thee Parkside on 17th.

devops000|11 months ago

If someone create a new business on top of this by changing layout and URL routes, how are they able to identify that they used this source code?

whalesalad|11 months ago

If you do it right, no one will know.

skeptrune|11 months ago

Just calling it source available from the get go would have gotten a much better reception!

BroadGauge|11 months ago

Are there any other large open-source (not necessarily free) rails codebases?

ingen0s|11 months ago

nice work, you forgot to remove your API key tho

clcaev|11 months ago

Could we please change the title to say : "Gumroad is source available"?

This license is clearly fails OSD and is not open source by the industry standard; perpetuating a false statement is unhelpful.

https://opensource.org/osd

WhyNotHugo|11 months ago

The license is actually pretty restrictive: you can only use this if you own a small company or work for government / non-profit.

Most average human's (including myself) can't use the source code in any way:

> You may use the software under this license only if (1) your company has less than 1 million USD (2024) total revenue in the prior tax year, and less than 10 million USD (2024) GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), or (2) you are a non-profit organization or government entity.

runningmike|11 months ago

So true. A very misleading title. This license is far away of any approved OSI or FSF Foss license. Gumroad is a great service, the value is imho not in the software. But in the execution of it’s mission and the very simple way to lower the bar to sell digital goods without upfront costs.

whalesalad|11 months ago

[deleted]

teekert|11 months ago

The Readme goes right to how to install it, and other than the logo saying "sell your stuff, see what sticks" there is 0 information about what it does. Sure I can Google, but I think it should be right there, at the top of the Readme.

swyx|11 months ago

god we are so spoiled. this is a successful, pretty well known commercial project. it's now source available. you have plenty of resources to get context in 2 minutes. lets appreciate the big stuff, have some agency for the rest.

usually if the project comes with a big lengthy beautiful readme thats actually a contra indicator that the thing is a production repo

TheRealDunkirk|11 months ago

I had no idea, and I've been a "Rails guy" for 15 years, and keenly interested in high-profile successful Ruby projects for a long time. Even clicking through to their actual site from the source repo page, I had to surmise what it was.

rchaud|11 months ago

It's an ecommerce platform.

foxygen|11 months ago

Did you open a PR or something?

joelhaasnoot|11 months ago

The license is also not front and center

kwanbix|11 months ago

My exact same thought.

ErrorNoBrain|11 months ago

I love how nothing in the readme tells me what it actually is.

StrandedKitty|11 months ago

> Sell your stuff. See what sticks.

Presumably an online shop with smart analytics.

nticompass|11 months ago

I saw this title and thought "the Australian craigslist is open source?" Then I realized I was confusing Gumroad and Gumtree.

lionkor|11 months ago

Time to train an "LLM" on it and have it reproduce the source code 1-to-1, so I can use it without a license!

hbn|11 months ago

Open sourcing my local AI model that trains on this repo and codes an app based on it:

    cp -r gumroad not-gumroad

singpolyma3|11 months ago

As if any court would accept this. Nice try