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Comment by jpallen | Hacker News Reader

ShareLaTeX Co-founder here. I'm glad that it works well for you once set up!

As for the installation, I know, this bit kind of sucks, sorry :( How long ago did you last install/upgrade? My co-founder is working pretty much full time on improving the ease of installation and configuration. One of the difficulties is that we use a lot of small services, which is great for large scale deployment, but a bit of a nightmare for producing a single standalone installable service with a unified config system. We're getting there though, and it's a priority at the moment. If you've got any feedback or problems you hit, please reach out at team@sharelatex.com. Thanks!

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> it's a priority at the moment

Out of curiosity: wouldn't improving the self-hosting experience cannibalize subscriptions of your paid plans?

Possibly slightly, but it's outweighed by the benefits of having an open-source self-hosted option (both for our business model and the greater good of the world).

Our working hypothesis is that people fall into one of two categories (possibly both, but only one at a time):

a) Those who just want a simple to use LaTeX environment that just works for their task at hand.

b) Those who are more interested in the tech, and happy to install software locally, happy to explore things like git for collaboration and really refine their own personal workflows with the tools they like.

The paid plans are used by people in category (a) and would never be of much interest to those in category (b). But the self-hosted option is great for some people in category (b).

We also have a paid version of self-hosted ShareLaTeX, with direct support from us, and enterprise features like LDAP, admin controls for managing thousands of users, etc. The open-source version forms a natural part of this, (see GitLab, etc)

Or c) Those who are interested in tech and the possibility of a open-source self-hosted option, but too busy to install and maintain it so also paying for a subscription like those in category (a).

We (my small research group) chose it over Authorea and others because of this possibility and implication that we won't get caught in a vendor lock-in situation in the future.

Exactly! That's what I meant by "possibly both, but only one at a time". At the moment you're in group (a), but might shift to group (b) later. I'd guess that if and when that shift occurs, we'd lose you as a paid user, regardless of whether we had an open-source version or not. This way at least you get an easier transition, and you'd still be using 'ShareLaTeX' which helps us from a brand recognition POV.

I have to applaud your attitude. And your strategy. It's actually pretty clever to support the host your own so people can see it's a way to avoid lock-in.

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