Comments on: Del.irio.us, Or How Not to Clone a Service

By: Desi

Desi — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:59:00 +0000

The del.icio.us thread link is (or has been) taken down. I’d love to read it, if you have an alternative uri maybe? Oh and thanks for the story.

By: August

August — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 07:49:21 +0000

The point is, it’s a closed service.

1. While improbable, del.icio.us or Yahoo! can decide anytime (in several years) that it’s not worth the hassle anymore and close down the service. Or their server might crash and take everything down, and they decide to stay down. Bummer. Out of luck.

2. Private bookmarks. I don’t want my bookmarks out in the open. Sorry. They are mine.

3. Extensions. Not very much with del.icio.us. Quite possible with de.lirio.us.

I agree that it’s not very nice to clone an existing project to the core. However, there seemed to be a demand for it, or it wouldn’t have happened. Also, the service initially wasn’t very much substance in code, or it wouldn’t have been possible to clone it that fast.

By: Trejkaz

Trejkaz — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 02:59:12 +0000

“Part of the reasoning for creating del.irio.us, according to Mallet, was the need for an open source version of the code that runs del.icio.us. To this issue, I’d ask only this: what is the problem that’s being solved by open source here? Development speed and contributions is the most likely answer”

Yes and no. The big differentiator as I see it, is that I don’t want absolutely *all* my bookmarks visible to the entire populace. It also puts the control back in your own hands, as you don’t have to worry about del.icio.us suddenly being shut down, and whoops, there go all your bookmarks.

By: David Smith

David Smith — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 23:16:15 +0000

Stephen,

Can’t get a Trackback through to this post (at least, that’s what TypePad’s saying at my end of the link), but I have posted here: http://www.preoccupations.org/2005/03/delirious.html.

Best wishes,

David

By: sogrady

sogrady — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:41:13 +0000

Danno: I could be mistaken, but I thought del.irio.us had an import function.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 16:38:31 +0000

David: no problem, will give your blog a look.

Rob: it’s really a matter of degrees to me, Rob. i agree that Mallet’s transparency defuse some of the irritation many are likely to feel. nor do i have a problem with people cloning services; competition is a good thing. but what i tried to highlight is the degree to which things are cloned. there’s some replication that’s necessary from a user perspective, and then - IMO - there’s gratuitous copying designed merely to perfectly replicate an environment and make one indistinguishable from another.

i have no problem with the former, but i believe the degree to which Mallet copied del.icio.us is not appropriate.

i’ll admit, however, that’s it an entirely subjective opinion and that there’s obvious room for disagreement.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 15:29:42 +0000

It doesn’t bother me so much. Does there need to be only one of everything? Steve seems to have been very up front about what he was doing. Presumably he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble if de.licio.us had been both open source and open content. And presumably no one will switch horses if they don’t see a real value in that combination.

By: David

David — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 15:25:07 +0000

Thanks for this mention, Stephen. I largely agree with what you’re saying. I’ll try to say something about it over at my blog later on today.

By: DannoHung

DannoHung — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 03:05:36 +0000

The fracturing issue is what bothers me. Nice that the dude acknowledges it openly though.

It’d also be nice if there was a way to post everything you’ve got at del.icio.us to that so as to give it a nice kick-start.