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Comment by pfooti | Hacker News Reader

I'm somewhat bummed about this - I am a big fan of ShareLaTeX, and have been using it for quite some time. I absolutely love that the whole thing is built on an open-source engine (not just the latex part - you can self-host if you want). Overleaf has a lot of also-interesting features, and probably a more robust revenue stream, but it's always a bit of a bummer when the open-source player in the market gets bought out by the closed-source one.

Hopefully that last bit in the announcement remains true: "Both Overleaf and ShareLaTeX are committed to ensuring that all of the open ShareLaTeX code base will remain open source and will continue to be actively developed."

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Thanks for the kind words about ShareLaTeX! It's always great to hear that people have enjoyed it.

The open source nature of ShareLaTeX isn't just about being good internet citizens, it's also been core to the ShareLaTeX business. As far as we can tell, it's only helped us to grow, from community goodwill, publicity, and onboarding for our onsite enterprise offering. We're very much bringing two thriving businesses together here, to get to where we want to get to quicker, without duplicating effort. And the open-source aspect is a strength that we plan to keep.

- James, ShareLaTeX co-founder

Time will tell, even if people have the best intentions a company doesn't usually buy out an competitor with an open source component to make it even better competition.

The business interests of the original company have changed, and unless they plan to make that open source product a part of the larger company, that focus will need to change quite possibly for the personnel who were maintaining it. I guess this really hinges on how they merge Overleaf and ShareLaTex, but I find it hard to imagine they'll open up that whole merged thing to self hosting?

Not trying to knock anyone, it's one of those times companies have every reason to say things will stay rosey and open because you don't want to offend your base, but no one can honestly promise that because priorities have and inevitably will change.

ShareLaTeX dev here.

We're very much committed to that statement, we wouldn't say it otherwise :)

Baawaahhh!!!!

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