skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The founder of FairSoftware is actually on HN: alain94040.

I had thoughts about going in this direction and competing with FairSoftware, but I couldn't convince myself that there would be enough qualified, dedicated people who could meet online and carry out large or even medium scale projects for commercial gain. So I ended up going after a different niche.

I peruse the list of FairSoftware projects every now and then, and it does seem to be trending upward. It's still young I believe, and would love to see info on the overall revenue generated by all of the projects (perhaps alain94040 could give us a ballpark figure?).
So, they're definitely giving you the short end of the stick. It's unfair. It's terrible. But there might be nothing you can do about it.

Most sites with an API have in their API agreement that they can cut you off at anytime with or without reason. Zillow states:

Zillow.com may change, suspend or discontinue the Zillow API and suspend or terminate your use of the Zillow API, Zillow Data, and/or Zillow Brand & Links at any time for any reason, without notice.

They've decided that you were great when you were adding value to them, but now you're a competitor and they're going to shut you down. This is the unfortunate circumstance of relying on services that can change their terms at any time.

I don't agree with the extent that RMS takes the free software argument all the time, but when he talks about cloud computing, this is what he's talking about. Providers are saying, "Don't worry. Leave everything to us. It will be nice and you don't have to maintain anything." It also means that you have no recourse when they decide to change their terms. You become beholden to them and their good graces - sounds like a feudal relationship in a way. Cross your lord and you'll live to regret it.

Really, the worst you can do to them is get them a lot of bad press. Maybe that will swing the power to your side - "attention developers: zillow will just cut you off from their API if they see you as competition." Might make Zillow more amenable to paying you a little more. Lots of sites would jump on publishing such a thing. The FSF or other FOSS advocates might write up stuff as a "warning: don't let this happen to you" about cloud computing. Zillow, I'm sure, would like to avoid their name in that mess - probably to the tune of more money than they're offering now.

Just remember. Enemies threaten; friends warn. Be very nice with Zillow and kinda casually mention that you think you might pitch TechCrunch on the idea of a story about the situation - cutting off API access and all. Remember, you're happy to sell and not mad at them, but that they might not come off looking so nice in the press at $250.
In my opinion the domain alone is easily worth a couple thousand dollars.
This is a fantastic answer, and why I love HN. Thank you for this.
Without knowing the other side of the story, without getting into the legalities or ethics of them cutting of API access like you say they are and going only on what you've said I would refuse them... easy. $250 is an insult, not an offer. Turn it down.
(reply to deleted discussion about race)

Not comparable. They can't discriminate based on several protected attributes (race/religion/etc), but they can discriminate for any other reason, even "I don't like him" or "using our trademark in his domain name". This is why a bar can throw you out for being a jerk but not for being black.

As others have noted you do have some power to damage them in the opinion of the world (well, the opinion of a few thousand geeks who even know what Zillow is).

It's a standard tactic to threaten and lowball. If you care enough, hardball back.
WalMart does make large changes to their stores and business models based on what their smaller competition is doing. So does Microsoft. So does Google.

The bottom line is that they are all ruthless competitors and that's why they're all leaders in their space.

It's no coincidence that WalMart and Google have very similar corporate communications strategies, either. Smiley faces and cutesy icons all the way to the firing squad.
Just goes to show you, any time you talk to someone in the media, do so knowing that it might just end up published
I would say that if they pursue a legal option it will cost them no less than $5-10K. Thus your minimum price should be about $15K. If they cut you off, figure out what competitor they might not want traffic to go to and set a landing page to point to them.

I would suggest you talk to an actual lawyer and see if you can get them on strong-arm tactics or anti-competitive practices.
I'll give you $275.
Play hardball and counteroffer with a higher #. Worst case scenario they'll try to take the domain by force, so you'll be out $250. Best case scenario, you'll get a larger payout.
Arrington's a member of the press that was sent a email saying "thought techcrunch might find this interesting" what do you think he was going to do with it?
What I would do is counter with some reasonable offer to show you're willing to play ball for the reasons below.

IANAL but I seem to remember in my business law class that even if my last name was "macdonald" in US courts I would have trouble keeping "macdonalds.com" because of trademark issues. I imagine the same would be true for izillow.com. On top of which, as other posters have mentioned, their Terms of Service likely gives them the right to cut you off at any time. Your leverage is low.

For them it is a business decision where they would rather avoid legal expense and bad PR.

Keeping in mind that the lower of legal fees + PR damage or the dollar value in harm your app does to their brand and sales sets the upper bound for what they would likely pay.

If the site is getting about 2500 visitors a month, I would probably respond mentioning how much work and time you put into it, and emphasizing that you want to work with them on this, then ask for $4,000.
Agree, this is the "business reason" I was talking about.
Yes. If you are a large organization and have the money for licenses and DBAs, they're definitely worth it.

Not everyone is a startup. Not everyone cares about clever hacks and rag-tag scalability and bragging about how they scaled up to 10k transactions per second on YouTube. Sometimes you just want to throw $10M at the fucking thing and have it work so everyone in your company gets the data they need.
cell phone calculator: scientific calculator :: scientific calculator: mathematica.

Mathematica is computational software. It has some powerful graphing capabilities and can be used to write technical reports. It can also handle very large sets of data. You write code to use it, and you can code C applications to access Mathematica. It is pretty powerful.

It is mainly used by scientists and engineers. I think you can get a home edition for around $300.
Disclaimer: Please don't take my (or anyone's) advice at face value without spending some serious time considering the best option for you.

I can't help but think there's something you aren't telling us, otherwise they've made a colossal error.

Let's look at your absolute worst case scenario. They cut off your API, put you completely out business, and end your app. Let's look at what they are offering you: $250. The worst case scenario + $250. What, exactly, do you have to lose, by rejecting their offer? $250. Put another way: nothing. Absolutely, nothing.

What is their worst case scenario? That you, oh I don't know, post around to bunch of places like Hacker News that they basically strong-armed you mafia style to shut down. Word spreads through dev circles that they are basically screwing their devs and abusing the trust of the dev community. They have to do all kinds of PR damage control.

The entire point of an open API is to attract devs to help spread your brand. If they want to turn around and start screwing the very people who help them, they'll find that dev pool dry very, very quickly.

In other words, the position they've put you in, you have virtually nothing to lose, and they have quite a bit. I'd respond accordingly. Save all their emails. Start working on the "zillow.com screws devs" website. Name your price, and tell them for both your sake, they should accept.
I would consider the creative approach of immediately changing izillow.net to a rallying cry.
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Anyone want to take a guess at how much free traffic and users were obtained by all 3 sites from this PR move?
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We sell Robotic lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, floor washing robots, pool cleaners, robotic games and toys, and more by such names as Friendly Robotics (the Robomower) and iRobot (the Roomba).
This is TERRIBLE UNETHICAL business practice

1) Determine a fair price
2) If they insist on being AS ridiculous like cutting off YOUR API access...
- Prepare a Twitter / Blog campaign (#zillowfail)
- Get the NYtimes reporter aware of this. They will listen to you if your email subject is "Unethical, unfair behavior from Zillow"
3) Negotiate further.

The HN hacker/Twitter community will help out. This is ridiculous
And I thought I was an obnoxious Lisp fanatic...
Of course, those of us who pre-ordered have had it for two weeks already. :)
Indeed. Combined with the console-based install, I can get an OpenBSD system up and running in about five minutes. (For what I've heard, this is pretty common.)
Interesting idea. I tested it with three pieces of equipment within my field of view, comparing the results to a simple Google search:
- Sony PVW-2650 betacam deck: Manuals Search Engine didn't find anything; Google returned a link to the operations manual.
- Canon SD800 IS digital camera: MSE 0; Google 1
- MacBook Pro: (on which I'm typing this) MSE 1; Google 1
They have literally stolen your idea and are now trying to pretend you never existed by stealing your identity, you're obviously worth a lot more than $250
The "religious conservatives" who do make the headlines are not like you.

I think you'll find that both the current Pope and the last Pope are, by any conceivable definition, "religious conservatives who make the headlines". You'll find if you read their writings on the topic for five seconds that they're pretty much in the same place as the grandparent.

Are you sure you're not seeing confirmation bias? As in, "It would disagree with my worldview greatly if I thought religious conservatives were basically decent people. Accordingly, I only remember the ones who aren't"? (I won't discount the possibility of confirmation bias in the media, granted. Phelps on AIDS makes for a much punchier quote than John Paul II on AIDS.)
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Here are some ideas:

1. Use the publicity that this controversy generates to drive traffic to your new site. Since you already have the software: you could set it up on a different domain. Then as this story spreads use it to get page views to the new domain. Publicity like this is the best thing that could happen to a small site.

2. Offer to sell Zillow your software. You can sell them the domain for $250 and then change them 10k or 100k for your software. Or could you customize your software to suit some particular need that they had? As someone else mentioned you could offer to work for them -- if they hire you they won't have to wait till you ramped up on the API.
You put the disclaimer at the end so I won't critcize but what you're giving is bad advice. I quote from the Zillow API Terms of Use...

================================================

Acceptable Use. You agree not to use the Zillow API, Zillow Data, or Zillow Brand & Links in any way that is unlawful, or harms Zillow.com, its service providers, its suppliers, your end users, or any other person. Further, pursuant to Section 10 below, Zillow.com may terminate your use of the Zillow API, Zillow Data and Zillow Brand & Links if and when Zillow.com determines that your use is inappropriate.

================================================

So there is something they can do. Blocking API calls is painfully easy and they've outlined their right to ban anyone they consider to be doing harm to them (which a competitor would clearly qualify as).

To Auston: I do agree that $250 is a really low bid and you might want to engage in a little friendly negotiation but in doing so realize they don't have to give you anything. So when choosing a tactic I'd avoid the hard negotiation and instead try to "charm" more money out of them.
In this case it seems Goodrich is the one to damage his reputation. Copying the press on this doesn't show much class and doing it as BCC is simply dishonest.

Of course, with another journalist (or a journalist) it might have ended there. With TC it ends up published.
Threatening to cut off his API access if he doesn't acquiesce sounds, to me, more like "demand" than "offer".

To the OP: looking at the pulse of just this thread, don't underestimate the size of the PR shit-storm they'd set off by strong-arming you out of the way. Try to help them understand that.
While I have nothing against collaboration, there is a place for "competition" if you by competition mean "independently confirmed results".

In the specific case I'm most familiar with, there are several research groups making software that does the same thing (n-body simulations, hydrodynamics, radiation transfer) and it is a massive duplicated effort. However, I don't think it's necessarily wasted. In my mind, having everyone collaborate on one code would vastly increase the risk of results being incorrect due to bugs or simply unjustified approximations. When several independent groups perform the same calculation, with different pieces of software using different approximation methods, you can have more faith in that the result is correct.

It's the fact that the academic "system" values being the first to publish a result that pushes everyone towards a competition at all costs approach, but that's only one of the things about incentives for scientists that can be criticized.

I spent my PhD thesis writing a piece of software that I then released under the GPL. It's possible I could get more papers by close-sourcing it and only working with people that would collaborate with me, but I made the calculated gamble that giving the community a free tool in the end would boost my recognition faster due to a wider adoption and more citations.
I created groups for news and discussions about Y Combinator and X-Google startups
Since the domain is "izillow" and it's playing off your knowledge of zillow, it seems like zillow could get the domain legally if they wanted to spend the effort.
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Excellent catch - glad I put the disclaimer in :-)

And you're right, my bad.
Browser wars could improve productivity, but the enterprise still loves IE6
I don't know that the average person even has a clue that it's called Android. All the commercials I've seen usually go along the lines of "T-Mobile G1, with Google".
Easter Egg: Set Facebook Language to "English (Pirate)"
UFO Resembling Octobus Filmed In Brazil
Wow, Incanter looks great. I've got to look into this more.

How do you know I don't do my research by making provocative statements on public fora?
<blockquote>Be very nice with Zillow and kinda casually mention that you think you might pitch TechCrunch on the idea of a story about the situation - cutting off API access and all. Remember, you're happy to sell and not mad at them, but that they might not come off looking so nice in the press at $250.</blockquote>

By posting everything about the situation on HN, isnt it possible that somebody has already caught wind of the story :).
Fair enough, but Zillow can't be the only company out there. I'd go looking for a competitor of theirs and access the competing APIs if they cut off his access to their service.
Actually, the article is mislabeled, I think. It seems to not so much argue against competition, but rather for the public dissemination of data. Writing papers but withholding the data so that no-one can reproduce your results is very different from simply trying to be the first to complete a study but then publish all data so it's available to others.

In my mind, writing papers but withholding the data that your results are based on is a highly dubious practice.
I think the general consensus here is to enter into a friendly negotiation. First rule of Negotiation 101 is to not accept the first offer. So given your history with them, state your grounds for why you feel your site deserves more than just a "couple hundred" bucks.
> CONNECT BY PRIOR on the other hand can be a life saver.

FWIW, the latest beta release of PostgreSQL supports recursive queries (using the SQL standard WITH RECURSIVE rather than CONNECT BY, but still).
Use Your G1 As… A Metal Detector?
One of my civil engineering professors worked as a consultant on Yucca Mountain and the Swedish nuclear waste repository. I had the chance to talk to him about Yucca Mountain, and he was very critical of their approach. Yucca's design is intended to prevent contact between groundwater and the waste, and ensure the waste is always accessible. While it sounds like a good idea, it's hard to guarantee in practice and made the design very difficult to engineer.

The Swedish design is simpler - they simply bury the waste and backfill the chambers. Waste is always in contact with groundwater, but the site was chosen so that diffusion through the rock is slow enough that it will decay to stable elements long before leaving the site.
Zillow owns the trademark and can still take down his site legally, I believe.
Unless he puts something else up on the site. If they give him enough grief, he could easily stop referring to the Zillow service and put up something unrelated. Depending on how bad the negotiations go, the owner could be quite creative in what he posts up on the site.
Cyberhomes, Trulia
It's an interesting scenario, as several people have pointed out: In one sense they have supreme leverage in that they have power over the API etc. At the same time, they have a reputation/brand to protect (damage to which could cost a whole lot more than $250). They've clearly come on strong, adding the threat of discontinuing your access to the API as a pressure cooker.

Ignoring the artificial pressure that they've added, what real incentive is there to accept this deal straight off? $250 isn't a game-changer -- Zillow knows that too. Fight for what you think it's worth.
We've never used a PR person or firm and only one time did one of us email a reporter out of the blue.

We are in the "lucky stiffs" category. ;-) Reporters love the information overload / productivity stuff and we tend to have lots of great data that excites reporters. We've done a few things to encourage this (blog post here and there), but for the most part, it's totally inbound.

In terms of signups, we've never noticed a huge bump in signups from mainstream media (a few national tech radio shows, NYT article, etc). We get more signups from blogs we've never heard of. It's great for SEO and credibility, tho.
Now that's funny. "new concepts". "DOS". Its actually quite amusing for hackers in my age group to watch the kids "discover" ancient programming history (again (and again (...)))
Coal plants put out more radioactive waste directly into the atmosphere than nuclear plants generate.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioac...

tell everyone you know, tell them again and again until it sinks in. everyone needs to know this. environmental groups need to be supporting nuclear plants. coal plants put out radioactive waste directly into the environment. the problem of storing it is trivial by comparison.
I'll correct my statement. They're in intense negotiations.
There are some nice photos on this site, but I think there is a lot junk that looks like it was created at the turn of the decade.

I'm a big fan of interface-lift.com and mandolux.com for my dual screen wallpapers. Sometimes I'll grab stuff from wikipedia's photo of the day.
So I'm wondering about those stupid legalese footers on some emails that say something to the effect of "if you weren't the intended recipient, delete this email and pretend you haven't already read it" - would that have helped in this case? Or, if the email had that footer, and Arrington published it, would that open him to legal liability? Or, are those footers just a total waste of space and time? Any lawyers in the house?
Worst case for zillow:

Since launch the site has received ~50,000 visitors + links from techcrunch, apple, google (appengine) and numerous blogs + recognition in the New York Times.

They let a well known company uses izillow for a while so they may have lost their trade mark by failing to defend it.

PS: It's a huge risk for company's to let others use their brands without defending them. They can get him to change the name or license the use of iZillow, but doing nothing is a really bad idea for them.
I like this. At the worst, they'll probably back off. I would if I were them.

I'd also be sure to get in contact with Zillow's CEO over this. I wouldn't be surprised if the guys at the top have no idea these shenanigans are going on.
Or maybe said boss would spend less just buying software than paying an employee to duplicate an maintain the functionality. For a large enough company, one software license is not that big of an expense.
Thanks! Of course any feedback is greatly appreciated (here or otherwise).
It is a very interesting program and can be used for data manipulation and mathematical research, I know that there are a large number of professors that supplement their research with mathematica and it seems to fit better than matlab with math based subjects.

Now there are some web based functionality that can be seen here: http://integrals.wolfram.com/index.jsp as well as it being the back for wolframalpha or so I am told.
Webapp, will prototype with Drupal, so no real hacking at first. Counts? Then Railsification. Me: Industrial/UX designer (and food lover) who loves DIY, but needs products for laymen, not just dev.s. Story: Our local (Maine) farmers market needs a site. Hell, why not build a build-your-own farmers market site platform/app? So that's the deal. Comments, recipes welcome.
I'd say $250 is a reasonable price for a successful app. Per hour, that is.

Let V be the fair value of your application. Come back with V^2/250. Now the geometric mean of your numbers is the fair value of the app. You're starting from a number that's no more ridiculous from where they started.

They're actually valuing your app at zero (because they consider theirs to be infinitely better and arrogantly expect to crush you) and the domain at $250, both of which valuations are so low as to be insults.

I concur with the other posters that, if they cut you off from their API, you should spread the word far and wide of what happened.
As someone who did the trademark dance let me add this. If you deny their offer and try to keep running your site, it will be trivial for them to file a complaint with ICANN and simply confiscate your domain name because of the trademark.

-BUT-

If you immediately switch over to doing something legitimate with that domain, you can keep it indefinitely and there is little they can do about it. Fortunately a criticism/parody site qualifies. I'd be more than ready to turn it into a "zillow screws devs" site.

Personally, I'd counter with a $12,500 offer and hope to settle for around $9500. That really is nothing to them. $250 is nothing but an insult. They must think you're 12. Its just plain bad taste to pair that with a naked threat.

I can't help but think of Monty Burns saying, "hey there young pup, if you give me that fine domain you've got there I'll give you a shiny nickel of your very own!"