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Show HN: Visual flow-based programming for Erlang, inspired by Node-RED

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204 points Towaway69 | 5 comments | 16 May 25 14:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Hi There,

Erlang-RED has been my project for the last couple of months and I would love to get some feedback from the HN community.

The idea is to take advantage of Erlangs message passing and low overhead processes to have true concurrency in Node-RED flows. Plus also to bring low-code visual flow-based programming to Erlang.

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js4ever ◴[16 May 25 15:07 UTC] No.44006405[source]▶
Congratulations for the launch! Also I never heard of that license before:

"LICENSE - DON'T DO EVIL" https://github.com/gorenje/erlang-red?tab=License-1-ov-file#...

Also I recommend you to put screenshots higher in the readme and also provide real world use case instead of fully abstract examples

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90s_dev ◴[16 May 25 15:27 UTC] No.44006630[source]▶
About 15 years ago I made a custom MIT or BSD license that added:

"You agree to think carefully and always reflect about what you do and why you do it" or something to that effect. I thought I was so clever at the time.

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1. 90s_dev ◴[16 May 25 15:29 UTC] No.44006652[source]▶
Now I'm on the fence about adding philosophy to software licenses, even if only in a joking way. It can be fun and even thought provoking, but it could get in the way of genuine business adoption for basically no return (you never know if it helps influence anyone for the better, and most likely it doesn't).
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2. SoftTalker ◴[16 May 25 15:36 UTC] No.44006726[source]▶
Any license that isn't a word-for-word match to one of the "approved" licenses can potentially trigger a need for legal review, depending on the enterprise. Lawyers are expensive so quirky licenses can be a deal-killer for any customers who take licenses seriously.

If you want to be funny, put an easter egg in your code, don't mess with your license.

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3. Towaway69 ◴[16 May 25 15:57 UTC] No.44006964[source]▶
My inspiration was came from Douglas Crockford and the JSONlint[1] license.

Why not have a message? I mean if big-tech won't use my software because they legally think they might do evil with it, so be it.

Do I really want big-tech to wrap my software into a product and sell it for profit while not giving me a cent because what I did was share my code without strings attached?

I don't know. I would like to make this place just that little bit better and if if that's a license that makes folks think about what is evil, heck why not!

[1] https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38...

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4. 90s_dev ◴[16 May 25 16:02 UTC] No.44007036[source]▶
> Or they'll write to me and say, "how do I know if it's evil or not? I don't think it's evil, but someone else might think it's evil, so I'm not gonna use it."

> Great. It's working. My license works. I'm stopping the evildoers.

Or cautiously logical people who are probably doing good but don't have an absolute certainty that they are, which is probably the best way to live.

5. Towaway69 ◴[16 May 25 16:03 UTC] No.44007039[source]▶
Easter eggs in code that break things are evil!

I don't write code for corporates, so my license is purely fictive. I cannot enforce my license but I can prevent corporates from taking my code and wrapping it into a product and selling it on for a profit. While not passing on a cent to me.

If a corporate wishes to use my code, then they are welcome to pay me a license fee or a one-off payment for a non-distributable license.