Joel is giving away his software to Y Combinator startups

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/YCombinator.html

by mhp • 18 years ago

93 48 18 years ago

arockwell• 18 years ago

There's also a new student and startup version that is free to use for up to two people (the YC version is the same deal, but unlimited people).

kaiserama• 18 years ago

Score!...now to get accepted by Y Combinator...:-\

t0pj• 18 years ago

Bravo.

kirubakaran3• 18 years ago

Wow text book example of win-win.

fallentimes2• 18 years ago

God damn it - we already paid for it.

Seriously though, FogBugz has been awesome and well worth the one time charge.

bestes• 18 years ago

This is for the "On-Demand" version, which is hosted and costs $25/user/month, not the standalone version.

fallentimes2• 18 years ago

Oh oops - good catch.

apgwoz• 18 years ago

So, really what your saying is that Joel is giving away his software so he can keep tabs on what YC Startups are doing? Suddenly, the idea seems more evil. :)

dustineichler• 18 years ago

This is astounding. Another reason I respect this guy so much.

jonnytran• 18 years ago

Yes, it's really an ingenious marketing scheme on Joel's part.

whatusername2• 18 years ago

it worked. We're all talking about it on here.

tomjen2• 18 years ago

Not really - Joel is smart. He knows that the marginal cost of a frogbuz account is almost nothing but that the price - if the company is acquired - is an entire company that use his software.

sanj• 18 years ago

Bummer. Not a YCombinator company, but in a startup and attempting to contribute to this community.

Hey Joel, any chance of a HN-karma-based lifting of the 2-person limit?

Say >1000 Karma and you can use more people?

Alex3917• 18 years ago

That would actually be an interesting idea for a social news site, partnering with companies to give away schwag to users who hit certain karma thresholds. I wonder what would happen.

jcl• 18 years ago

More "Make Karma Fast" schemes?

xg• 18 years ago

Solid of them to do that, but FogBugz is terrible. Our dev team found it to be tedious (4 developers).

We've switched to Pivotal Tracker (also in free beta) and find it much more suited to rapid development and "agile" practices. In particular, we find the predictive tools actually useful.

johnrob• 18 years ago

More tedious than bugzilla? Or were you just expecting more because it is not free.

modoc4• 18 years ago

Can anyone compare FogBugz with Jira (my current fav)?

cstejerean2• 18 years ago

If you like Jira you might not like the simplicity and clean UI of FogBugz. We switched from FogBugz to Jira at my last job and I personally didn't like it very much. But management liked the flexible reporting and complicated workflows they could invent.

Personally I think Jira looks like it was written 10 years ago and can get quite slow at times, which together with the fact that there's no AJAX and every click reloads an entire page means it can be a very unpleasant experience.

thorax• 18 years ago

Been enjoying Assembla's light ticketing system. It feels heavily modeled on Trac.

ojbyrne• 18 years ago

We use Trac and like it a lot. Love to hear someone convince me that there's something better out there.

jyothi• 18 years ago

I just started using Zoho Project. I am fairly impressed with the task dependency, milestones, team integration and such. You can also embed files or edit within with integrated zoho writer, ppt, calendar, alerts.

It is free for one project and unlimited users, paid ones have more space and projects starting at 12$/mo

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

I've never used FogBugz. Why would a hacker choose it over the usual open source stuff (Trac, bugzilla)?

cstejerean2• 18 years ago

I would choose an open source product, but trac and bugzilla are both terrible. hopefully some better options emerge (or I become aware of them).

kirubakaran3• 18 years ago

How about Mantis? http://www.mantisbt.org/

Demo: http://demo.mantisbt.org/my_view_page.php

modoc4• 18 years ago

Jira is fantastic, but not open source (although you do get a copy of the source when you buy it).

tjpick• 18 years ago

I'm currently using GNUe DCL and it's working out pretty well for me. We also use it at my day job (team environment) and it's pretty good. Can be a little hard to get up and running and is a bit rough in places. Used fogbugz at previous job and I'd take DCL over it - fogbugz is not too shabby though.

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

I, for one, am curious to play with the evidence-based scheduling:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/26.html

If that feature is useful at all it will be worth $200 per seat. Indeed, even if the data do nothing but tell me what I already know, but the software can turn that data into pretty graphs that I can put on slides and wave in front of my clients as I pitch projects, it will be worth $200 per seat. Clients looooove realistic estimates.

ii• 18 years ago

FogBugz integrates with VSS, SVN, Mercurial, CVS, Visual Studio, Eclipse, Perforce, Vault and SnagIt.

No Git support makes it unusable for me.

mhp• 18 years ago

http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/blog/post/Git-Integration.as...

nickb2• 18 years ago

We've been using http://Acunote.com for agile issue tracking and it's been performing well. But going forward we're looking at Mantis (http://www.mantisbt.org/) and Jira. Jira's very expensive and Mantis is GPL and does most of what Jira does.

Could someone, in a sentence or two, explain how FogBugz compares to Mantis or Bugzilla?

gleb• 18 years ago

Glad you are happy with Acunote. You probably won't have a reason to switch away from it, not in Mantis/Jira direction anyway :-) That's functionality-wise, the open-source angle is always valid of course.

nickb2• 18 years ago

Cool :) And yes, Acunote is great!

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

We've been giving away our software to YC startups for nearly two years now. I never thought to make a website about it, though. I guess that's what sets the folks like Joel apart from the rest of us. That's a guy who knows how to give away software with style.

Seriously, though, it's cool and really good marketing. I've only seen Fogbugz in passing (it was trialed at a Python shop I worked in a few years back, but wasn't adopted), but I've heard good things.

13ren2• 18 years ago

This differential pricing helps satisfy demand (like student movie tickets). Most of the poor students/startups could not afford to buy anyway, so you lose little by giving it away.

But you gain potential customers, like MacDonalds targetting children: "get 'em while they're young [and poor]". Lock-in is stronger with software: UI familiarity (e.g. vi vs. emacs); data on their server.

If you had a dominant market position, this differential pricing can help a scorched-earth policy: by denying no-one, you don't start the seeds of copy-cat competitors - they have no fuel to burn (i.e. no customers, no interest). The danger with copy-cat competitors is that as they grow, they often differentiate into genuine alternatives in their own right. Better to nip 'em in the bud (or not enable the bud to grow in the first place).

Joel isn't in that position (there are several bug-trackers): here, it's just an earlier arena for the fight for customers (like employers interviewing earlier and earlier at university). For example, the Jira people offer free products for open source projects.

The above is a business interpretation, based on cynical self-interest, but I think the result is healthy: customers get high-quality yet affordable products; you get customers - to each according to his need; from each according to his ability (to pay). Meeting needs is a good thing.

But for customers, it's just as important to evaluate what they are getting, even though it's free. Otherwise, you watch free TV, browse free websites, and buy supermarket "specials" without making a decision about what you're really buying. You might have chosen to buy it anyway; you might not.

There are vulnerabilities with hosted data; e.g. if Joel had to change his policy, how would customers get their data out? These are questions common to all vendors, and it's not just because it's free - it's just then when it's free, it's easier to not consider these questions properly. It's up to customers to do their due diligence. All Joel can do is work hard to create something useful, and let you know about it. He can't tell if it's right for you and your specific needs or not.

Note: I think it's great Joel is doing this, and it's beneficial all round.

babakian• 18 years ago

To the point about getting your data out. FogBugz On Demand lets you download a snapshot of your database, at any time, in three different formats: MS SQL Server, Access, and MySQL. The FogBugz database schema is open and fully documented here: http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/KB/dbsetup/FogBugzSchema.htm...

13ren2• 18 years ago

That's fantastic! Thanks. <vader>impressive</vader> My esteem for Joel just went up a notch.

hooande• 18 years ago

Thanks, Joel!

subbu• 18 years ago

Give us something casual. Bug tracking need not be painful.

dchest• 18 years ago

Screw it, use Redmine.

Joel is giving away his software to Y Combinator startups

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