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827 points surgomat | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.418s | source

I was the main contributor to workout.lol, an open-source fitness app to easily build a workout routine. The project had traction (1.4k GitHub stars, 95 forks, ~20K visits/month), but was eventually sold due to video licensing hurdles. The new owner stopped maintaining it, and the repo went abandoned.

Over the next 9 months, I sent 15 emails to try to save it : no replies. Feature requests & issues were ignored. The community was left with a "broken" tool let's say.

I couldn't just let it die So I built the new version from scratch with the same open-source spirit, but a better architecture long-term vision, more features and no license problems.

It's called : Workout.cool (https://workout.cool). What it offers: 100% open-source, MIT-licensed - 1200+ exercises (with videos, attributes, translations) - Progress tracking - Multilingual-ready - Self-hostable

I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing it because I believe in open fitness tools, and I’ve been passionate about strength training for 15+ years.

If this resonates with you, feel free to: - Star the repo - Share with fitness/tech friends - Suggest features - Contribute code/design/docs

Together, we can build the open-source fitness platform we all wanted to easily build a workout routine and get in shape

Website: https://workout.cool GitHub: https://github.com/Snouzy/workout-cool

1. bityard ◴[] No.44310645[source]
Do we have any assurance that you won't sell it again?
replies(1): >>44310953 #
2. surgomat ◴[] No.44310953[source]
To be clear: I never owned workout.lol, I was just the main contributor.

For the sell process, like with any open-source project whether it's an NPM package or anything else, there are no absolute guarantees... that's just the nature of open ecosystems...

But I've built Workout.cool with transparency in mind, no hidden business model, and self-hostable.

Just what I can tell you is this :

I've been passionate about fitness my whole life let's say. I started sports at 3 years old, and I've been into strength training for over 15 years.

I didn't build this to make money. I built it because I genuinely care and because I see more and more people missing out on the benefits of training, often overwhelmed by complexity, closed ecosystems, or paywalled apps, including people close to me, like my sister.

Hope that my reply counts for something...