Show HN: Pinry, a self-hosted Pinterest

by kklimonda • 13 years ago

140 41 13 years ago

ajaxguy• 13 years ago

UI looks clean and fast. Just curious, do you have any revenue model on this?

overshard5• 13 years ago

There is none, in the future we do have plans to have hosted instances of Pinry so those who don't know how to setup their own server can purchase easy one-click hosting through us. We plan to do hosting as close to cost as possible/not looking to get rich off this.

ChrisNorstrom• 13 years ago

Thank you so so much. So many people have built their businesses and lives on open source, I don't know what the internet would be today without free software.

Evbn6• 13 years ago

Consider licensing copies of pinry to hosting companies, so users can get one hosting service with all their apps, instead of maintaining so many services with separate billing, etc.

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

Very nice. Kind of scary the power of open source and how quickly competitors can spring up these days

hnriot• 13 years ago

Why is this surprising. It's not exactly difficult to build something very like Pinterest.

stevekemp• 13 years ago

Most things aren't hard if you're only working at the scale of a single server.

Running the actual Pinterest, with millions of users, would be pretty hard. (At least for those with no prior experience of working at scale.)

cllns2• 13 years ago

I suggest making the 'Demo' button more prominent! It's tiny and low contrast (white on light green).

Both 'View the code' and 'Download' are bigger. People could ostensibly want to view the code before seeing it but I can't imagine many would want to download without demoing first.

overshard5• 13 years ago

You are correct and I have adjusted accordingly, you can see the results immediately: http://getpinry.com/

msutherl• 13 years ago

Thanks, I had the same issue. Some other suggestions:

1. Perhaps try shortening the copy. The large buttons could just read:

Code (Github) | Demo

Either increase the text size or also shorten the copy on the smaller buttons to fix the resulting size offset:

Download (62kb) | BitBucket | Issues

2. Your "Follow @getpinry" is overlapping the "Tweet" button.

3. I find the grey borders superfluous and a bit heavy-handed. I think you could just remove them, replace them with shadows, or lighten them and tint them a bit blue so that they don't stand out so much.

Looks great, btw. Have been looking for a platform on which to share inspiration with co-workers inside corporate intranet.

greyman3• 13 years ago

How do you see the issue of possible copyright infringement when self-hosting pinterest clone? Normally, if you republish copyrighted photo (even smaller version), you might get accused of stealing it - you are basically posting a resized version of a photo, which might not be fair use.

Pinterest can get around this by claiming that it was the user who pinned the photo, not them, and they also allow websites to opt-out from pinning (and some websites like National Geographic actually do that). But if you self-host, you are responsible for what is posted...

I am asking because, if I could legally run a website where I would publish smaller version of any photo I find on the Internet, then well, there's a great monetization potential there. But I don't think it would be so easy.

cllns2• 13 years ago

Apparently pinterest does it via <meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />

You could honor a 'content="nopin"'. It's be interesting if that became a standard (similar to nofollow or robots.txt).

[1] https://help.pinterest.com/entries/21063792-How-to-prevent-p...

greyman3• 13 years ago

Ok, let's say I will honor nopin. But isn't the legality still in question, since it is not user-submitted content? Or can I be safe when the pins will be "small enough"?

overshard5• 13 years ago

Well that's sort of the point of Pinry. We don't have to deal with it, it's up to the individual who hosts their own Pinry. We don't maintain that user's servers or have anything to do with it. If you want a completely private Pinry you can and then no one will ever question copyrighted photos because no one but you will see it.

If someone has a copyright complaint with a public Pinry it will need to be directed at that individual because we really have no control over it and even if we did honor something like a nopin tag it's open source, it'll just get removed if someone wants to post copyrighted material.

greyman3• 13 years ago

Yes, I understand that you are not responsible for that, and can't deal with it. I am just pondering whether it is possible to legally run Pinry-powered website, when I myself will be the only user and will want to pin also copyrighted content.

And if not, what do you think would be a typical usecase, i.e. who would want to run Pinry-powered website?

monkeynotes• 13 years ago

"...if I could legally run a website where I would publish smaller version of any photo I find on the Internet..."

Doesn't Google/Bing do this with their image search?

JacobJans• 13 years ago

Well, they actually copy and host almost the entire internet, without permission. But maybe that's another story.

Evbn6• 13 years ago

They will respect requests to not index an image, if their fair use is challenged.

icebraining• 13 years ago

On Pinterest, while they have a safe harbor according to the DMCA, the user can be sued by the copyright holder, just like here.

In practice, I suspect most copyright holders will send a DMCA takedown anyway, either to you or to the company hosting the site, if you're on a VPS or PaaS service.

snoonan2• 13 years ago

Just a public service announcement: Please respect trademarks and avoid naming things tied to others peoples' branding work. I know it's usually an homage, but there's no reason to do it and it does bend trademark law (if not break it) sometimes.

justincormack2• 13 years ago

Its up to Pinterest to try to enforce their trademark if they think they are too similar, which is unclear. The word pin alone is not enforceable, so Pinry likely ok.

Evbn6• 13 years ago

Just a public service announcement: trademark holders can't seize the centuries-old common English language for their private use.

snoonan2• 13 years ago

Don't misunderstand this as an endorsement of jerky trademark enforcement.

My point was that they did the work to associate "pin" with this concept in the public mind. Of course they don't own the word. That's just stupid. When people do these homages or clones, they are gaining traction and influence by riding on the work they did. Enforcement? Who cares... it's just unoriginal, cheap and lazy to trade on the name.

jpadilla_• 13 years ago

Very nice to see something like this built on Django!

human_error• 13 years ago

Pinterest itself is built on Django as well.

bobf• 13 years ago

If you are interested in using this for your own project look at the previous version at https://github.com/overshard/pinry, which has more friendly licensing terms (BSD, vs AGPL).

gavinh• 13 years ago

Nice, but lose the font. The footer's contrast is a bit low. I also find the fixed background image on the landing page to be confusing, since the rest of the page does not use any parallax effects.

DanBlake• 13 years ago

agpl? People still think using that is a good idea?

fotbr• 13 years ago

Why the change from a BSD style license to the AGPL? While it looks like a neat project, and I'd use something like this for my personal use; but that particular license means I won't touch it with a 10ft pole.

The older BSD version -- https://github.com/overshard/pinry/tree/26f9c76988b8cc5b0ee5... -- looks like something I might play around with though.

ancarda• 13 years ago

What's wrong with AGPL?

dualboot• 13 years ago

It's a license that requires any changes you make to the code be made available to the public as well as all code that connects to it in related services.

It is a license that touts "ultimate freedom" but the reality is that it removes your freedom to make changes that you would like to keep private.

reeses• 13 years ago

Ack, thanks for the catch. I cannot abide AGPL/GPLv3 because it renders accommodation a little too hairy.

Thanks for identifying the fork point as well.

Show HN: Pinry, a self-hosted Pinterest

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