I wonder why it wasn't this way from the get-go... Oh well, at least I'm actually interested in it now. Can't wait for the Linux version to try it out. Pumped that they did the right thing and open-sourced it so that it actually has a chance of becoming widespread, and more importantly, of sticking around for longer than a couple years.
At the risk of being too cynical, I suspect that they're open sourcing it because their analytics indicated an adoption rate that wouldn't justify active development. Not sure if this is still the case, but the Atom.io website, at one point, indicated that its price would not be free, but would be competitive with similar products in the market (I'm assuming Sublime Text).
As I saw it, GitHub was trying to see if it could become a business. Developers will pay decent money (as in "desktop software" money, not "mobile app" money) for a quality text editor.
I wouldn't have blamed them for going commercial, but I'm happy to see them releasing this to the community. :)
I assumed they wanted to limit the amount of feedback/bug reports they got to a level they could usefully cope with. Any new release is potentially going to have tons of issues with real world situations that never happened for developers or in QA. Anything released by GitHub is going to get a lot of attention. By limiting the number of initial users, they can get some real world testing and not get millions of duplicate bug reports.
Also, releasing something open-source isn't as straightforward as it may seem unless you've started that way. Think about all the internal libraries that developers might have used or all the security or licensing aspect of it. There are lots of stuff I would love to release open-source but I just don't have the time and I'm too much of a perfectionist anyway.
> As Emacs and Vim have demonstrated over the past three decades, if you want to build a thriving, long-lasting community around a text editor, it has to be open source.
I agree whole-heartedly. In fact, I don't believe that editors like Sublime Text would have such a large following if not for the extended "free-trial" functionality.
It will be exciting to see where this project goes, and I think open-sourcing the rest of the editor was a great move.
Agreed, amazing news. This is the announcement I've been waiting for. I've long been worried that with a closed source core, the editor would of fallen prey to the same issues that plague closed source editors. With that out of the way now, I'm excited for what atom will become.
You're confusing "free" in pricing with "free" in freedom. A free trial creates a completely different type of community than free and open code. GitHub could have just provided a closed binary for free if they wanted to go the Sublime route.
Interestingly, Tom Preston-Werner (former CEO of Github) said in February that Atom wouldn't be fully open-source:
“Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either. It will be somewhere inbetween, making it easy for us to charge for Atom while still making the source available under a restrictive license so you can see how everything works. We haven't finalized exactly how this will work yet. We will have full details ready for the official launch.”
- Tom Preston-Werner, 27 Feb 2014 http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9
Is there any chance this change of heart has to do with his departure? Perhaps the team always wanted to commit to being fully open-source, and he was the blocker.
Please don't say 'fully open source', as it confuses the language.
"Open Source" is a well-defined term[0] . What Tom Preston-Warner describes there is basically the same as Microsoft's "Shared source[1] " licenses, which do not fit the definition of Open Source.
> As Emacs and Vim have demonstrated over the past three decades, if you want to build a thriving, long-lasting community around a text editor, it has to be open source.
Using a free software license is a big improvement, but I wish that they used a copyleft license like the GNU GPLv3. Inevitably, we'll see proprietary extensions and "pro" versions. Strong copyleft is important for the freedom of end users.
The GPL doesn't prevent the proprietary extensions and "pro" versions, it just prevents anybody but the original author from making those pro versions.
Therefore companies who want to make their money selling pro versions usually choose the GPL license. So in practice, we see more "commercial/pro" versions of GPL software than we do of MIT/BSD licensed software.
Perhaps we will. I strongly doubt any of those will be even a slight success, unless released by the Atom team (which the copyleft license wouldn't affect).
Well, I'm glad for the closer to public domain MIT licensing.
I believe that the ability to sell it if you hit a home run leads to a lot of big ideas getting tried and the base hits making their way back into the open codebase.
But I think it is a matter of taste/personal preference. For me, copy middle feels more free.
The editor I use now (Epsilon) was last significantly rev'd about 8 years ago. It's a fine editor, but I'm starting to look for a replacement (and, oddly, I cannot stand where modern Emacs went).
Sublime Text 2 is darned close. If only I could teach it proper bindings of C-U . . .
I think we have. Debuggers are highly language specific. It's just easier to have a separate debugger for each language.
I think it'd be nice if some of the IDEs gave up on forcing everything into their project structure. There's a real market for stand alone visual debuggers that don't try to manage your entire project.
Being hackable, I presume that integrating a remote debugger should be possible.
Vim can already technically do it - just that most people who cared about integrated debugging were probably using emacs.
Javascript has been the biggest waste and diversion of programmer talent since computers were invented. Billions of dollars have been wasted trying to fit every square peg there is into a Javascript round hole, and the sh*t still continues.
Even after 20 years Javascript UIs can't match stuff done 20 years ago on native UIs.
Whatever happened to the notion of cost-benefit analysis?
Is there ever going to be some professionalism in the programing profession, if in its current state it can be called a profession?
How much effort is the industry going to put into implementing software on the Javascript/HTML combo which is, has been and will always be under-specified for what programmers want to use them for?
PS. It seems that every other article on HN relates to an attempt to hack some complicated stuff on top of an ill-suited Javascript/HTML combo. Is there some connection here?
You should only be embarrassed if you continue to beat up on it in light of the new information. Otherwise, if your arguments were correct and valid at the time, there's no reason to be embarrassed.
Its got a _long_ ways to go before sublime has anything to worry about. The plugins and language support Sublime has is its real asset. I'd be happy to make the switch when the feature parity is there, because I'm not too happy with the way Sublime 3 has played out, but that day is a ways off.
This is an interesting reversal for Github. The original FAQ implied that Github would try to market Atom commercially. I'm curious as to what made them change their mind.
Installed on Linux Mint. Some minor UI problems here and there. But that's nothing compared to how bad autocomplete is. At least for PHP development it's unusable at all. Because of that even had no intention to check further. But for those who wonder - yes, it works on Linux.
I'm pretty excited about Atom Shell as it looks like they fixed the different js context problem that node-webkit had. The last time i tried node-webkit i was really annoyed by the sneaky bugs that pushing objects from one context to the other introduced.
Maybe someone will implement the UI without a Node/CoffeeScript backend? Memory usage has been pretty abysmal in my trials (though we've got some very large repos).
I'm definitely with the group that they 'opensourced' this because they had to... I know my entire office went from 'fuck-yeah' to '.... meh' to 'what? yeah, I forgot about that' in about two weeks time.
I mean, it's still damn good of 'em I just hope it gets some love. I'd like to see more competition in the space, but right now I have a feeling it's just going to be abandoned before too long then I'll be knocking on the door of ST3 or Vim again.
IMHO Tom (now gone from the company) always held a strong opinion to open-source ALMOST everything.
From the outside, looking at the conversations that took place on Twitter after the initial release, he seemed to have a strong opinion on Atom being the same way, core inside github and rest is open-source.
Now that he's gone, that limitation is off and it's open source as it should have been from the get-go.
There's absolutely no reason this product won't be open source to the core, the more people actively developing on it the better.
Me personally, I haven't used it and I don't see myself using it ever in the future, but it seems like a very nice concept project.
[+] [-] pachydermic|12 years ago|reply
Good on you, Atom.io devs
[+] [-] rmrfrmrf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oddevan|12 years ago|reply
As I saw it, GitHub was trying to see if it could become a business. Developers will pay decent money (as in "desktop software" money, not "mobile app" money) for a quality text editor.
I wouldn't have blamed them for going commercial, but I'm happy to see them releasing this to the community. :)
[+] [-] SmileyKeith|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhubarbquid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d0m|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ecnahc515|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fasebook|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jwcrux|12 years ago|reply
> As Emacs and Vim have demonstrated over the past three decades, if you want to build a thriving, long-lasting community around a text editor, it has to be open source.
I agree whole-heartedly. In fact, I don't believe that editors like Sublime Text would have such a large following if not for the extended "free-trial" functionality.
It will be exciting to see where this project goes, and I think open-sourcing the rest of the editor was a great move.
[+] [-] 1qaz2wsx3edc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pytrin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jordn|12 years ago|reply
“Atom won't be closed source, but it won't be open source either. It will be somewhere inbetween, making it easy for us to charge for Atom while still making the source available under a restrictive license so you can see how everything works. We haven't finalized exactly how this will work yet. We will have full details ready for the official launch.” - Tom Preston-Werner, 27 Feb 2014 http://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-closed-source/82/9
There was a HN discussion about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7310017
[+] [-] jdmichal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chimeracoder|12 years ago|reply
"Open Source" is a well-defined term[0] . What Tom Preston-Warner describes there is basically the same as Microsoft's "Shared source[1] " licenses, which do not fit the definition of Open Source.
[0]http://opensource.org/osdhttp://opensource.org/osd
[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_sourcehttp://en.m.wiki...
[+] [-] cies|12 years ago|reply
That's under-promise/over-deliver in action my friend :)
[+] [-] pit|12 years ago|reply
https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/5
I realize this is inherent to the nature of version control, but it's neat to think about the history as a "Making-Of" Atom.
[+] [-] davexunit|12 years ago|reply
Using a free software license is a big improvement, but I wish that they used a copyleft license like the GNU GPLv3. Inevitably, we'll see proprietary extensions and "pro" versions. Strong copyleft is important for the freedom of end users.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|12 years ago|reply
Therefore companies who want to make their money selling pro versions usually choose the GPL license. So in practice, we see more "commercial/pro" versions of GPL software than we do of MIT/BSD licensed software.
[+] [-] poolpool|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamperBob2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eq-|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatthatis|12 years ago|reply
I believe that the ability to sell it if you hit a home run leads to a lot of big ideas getting tried and the base hits making their way back into the open codebase.
But I think it is a matter of taste/personal preference. For me, copy middle feels more free.
[+] [-] lucian1900|12 years ago|reply
It would preclude using so much code in extensions, for no particularly good reason.
[+] [-] tootie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabdib|12 years ago|reply
The editor I use now (Epsilon) was last significantly rev'd about 8 years ago. It's a fine editor, but I'm starting to look for a replacement (and, oddly, I cannot stand where modern Emacs went).
Sublime Text 2 is darned close. If only I could teach it proper bindings of C-U . . .
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmil|12 years ago|reply
I think it'd be nice if some of the IDEs gave up on forcing everything into their project structure. There's a real market for stand alone visual debuggers that don't try to manage your entire project.
[+] [-] drothlis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] statictype|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vfclists|12 years ago|reply
Javascript has been the biggest waste and diversion of programmer talent since computers were invented. Billions of dollars have been wasted trying to fit every square peg there is into a Javascript round hole, and the sh*t still continues.
Even after 20 years Javascript UIs can't match stuff done 20 years ago on native UIs.
Whatever happened to the notion of cost-benefit analysis?
Is there ever going to be some professionalism in the programing profession, if in its current state it can be called a profession?
How much effort is the industry going to put into implementing software on the Javascript/HTML combo which is, has been and will always be under-specified for what programmers want to use them for?
PS. It seems that every other article on HN relates to an attempt to hack some complicated stuff on top of an ill-suited Javascript/HTML combo. Is there some connection here?
[+] [-] edwintorok|12 years ago|reply
The first time I've heard about Atom was here: https://medium.com/p/433852f4b4d1
[+] [-] matthewmacleod|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdmichal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donaldguy|12 years ago|reply
The Atom Shell open sourcing is also interesting ... I wonder if it will lead to a rash of other Chromium-fork-apps
[+] [-] swah|12 years ago|reply
---
There are builds for atom-shell for Windows and it gives you something that looks like this: http://imgur.com/H0RcGc5
I haven't understood what you're supposed to do with it yet (I thought it was just a library).
OT: Fullscreen and windowing is nicer in Windows... In OSX (@home) everything feels sluggish with the overflow of animations...
[+] [-] tyleregeto|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] patrickg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adefa|12 years ago|reply
http://work.strieber.org/Atom-0.95.0-61fff23be.zip
[+] [-] ruswick|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endijs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwr|12 years ago|reply
Thumbs up, Github!
[+] [-] rubyn00bie|12 years ago|reply
I'm definitely with the group that they 'opensourced' this because they had to... I know my entire office went from 'fuck-yeah' to '.... meh' to 'what? yeah, I forgot about that' in about two weeks time.
I mean, it's still damn good of 'em I just hope it gets some love. I'd like to see more competition in the space, but right now I have a feeling it's just going to be abandoned before too long then I'll be knocking on the door of ST3 or Vim again.
[+] [-] avitzurel|12 years ago|reply
From the outside, looking at the conversations that took place on Twitter after the initial release, he seemed to have a strong opinion on Atom being the same way, core inside github and rest is open-source.
Now that he's gone, that limitation is off and it's open source as it should have been from the get-go.
There's absolutely no reason this product won't be open source to the core, the more people actively developing on it the better.
Me personally, I haven't used it and I don't see myself using it ever in the future, but it seems like a very nice concept project.
[+] [-] brlewis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErikRogneby|12 years ago|reply