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Re:Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?) by protoduction on Monday November 01, 2021 @10:21PM (#29076125)
Half a year back or so I built a mini SaaS product that failed, now I'm in the process of open sourcing it so that everybody can freely host it for themselves. Here's the project homepage https://magiclogin.net, it was/is transactional e-mails and e-mail authentication as a service.

Getting it ready for open sourcing is a lot more work than I anticipated, I don't want to just dump it in a Github repo and have nobody be able to actually use it, so I'm making deployment easier and writing docs on how to run it yourself.

I didn't build the project to make money necessarily, it was mostly a learning project. That doesn't mean that I didn't hope it would be at least moderately succesful financially. But it was a case of "build and they won't come" and my other projects took off much more so I couldn't justify trying to market/pivot it. The final nail in the coffin came when I received a cease and desist letter because apparently a vc-funded auth provider trademarked the term "Magic Login".. So yeah..

Re:Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?) by etewiah on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @05:47AM (#29079020)
Hi, I think it is great that you are making the effort to open source your project. I did the same with a real estate website builder I created:

https://github.com/etewiah/property_web_builder

It was a lot of work but I now have a small stream of people who contact me every so often about it.

BTW, you seem like a smart guy and I am looking for someone to work with me on a relaunch of the project as a paid product. I have learnt a lot in the years since my first attempt so I think I have a pretty decent chance of success this time round.

Re:Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?) by herval on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @01:46AM (#29077528)
This is pretty useful as a product, and magic.link has been a hit and miss experience for me. Where will you post/announce the open source version? I’ll definitely check it out!
Re:Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?) by protoduction on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @07:20AM (#29079597)
I'm not sure yet - but for sure I'll post a link up on https://magiclogin.net (or you could follow me on Github, username @gzuidhof)
Re:Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?) by notRobot on Tuesday November 02, 2021 @04:28AM (#29078483)
That seems really neat! Have you considered just relaunching it under a different name?
Re:Ask HN: What you up to? (Who doesn't want to be hired?) by blakbelt78 on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @11:14AM (#29095832)
This is interesting. I’m building something that is similar. What do you think it didn’t succeed? Not enough marketing? Difficult implementation?