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I agree. screen session sharing is great. This is a plug but highly on topic, http://shellshadow.com/ is collaborative PuTTY. I think you'll find it works great for cases where shared screen is less safe or accessible for the enjoined user.

I second that. I was dumbfounded when I read this post. Seriously, you get on slashdot and you don't put your URL about looking for help. Your nuts. Let me repeat that: You want help but don't give people a source for context on the help. YOU ARE NUTS!!!
I'm not trying to be mean. Please don't be offended.

The slashdot editors should have seen this as a prob as well and either not posted the query or gone back to the author and told him of his obvious misdirection.

Jon Hancock
http://shellshadow.com/

Good article to set people straight on how mundane most startups are. I am almost 40 and http://www.shellshadow.com/ is my 3rd startup (not counting the half-baked college days projects).
I have purposely narrowed my focus on this one. Some has to do with age and risk profile changing. But the other reasons are that I do have more experience and understand that my goal is to fill a niche and that initial niche better be good enough to get to sustained profits quick. If I can take on adjacent markets and grow from there, fantastic. But that better not be required.

Jon Hancock
http://www.shellshadow.com/

Good article to set people straight on how mundane most startups are. I am almost 40 and http://www.shellshadow.com/ is my 3rd startup (not counting the half-baked college days projects).
I have purposely narrowed my focus on this one. Some has to do with age and risk profile changing. But the other reasons are that I do have more experience and understand that my goal is to fill a niche and that initial niche better be good enough to get to sustained profits quick. If I can take on adjacent markets and grow from there, fantastic. But that better not be required.

Jon Hancock
http://www.shellshadow.com/

fully agree. I"ve launched a server support tool http://www.shellshadow.com./ Its distro agnostic. The tool, a collaborative terminal client, is derived from open source products. The initial user base is FOSS users. Should the product and service be free? No. If I want to keep the product growing and make money and pay employees, I have to run a business. I can give back to the community and have a meaningful biz model at the same time.

Canonical has been clear for at least two years that it intends to make money off support and other products and keep ubuntu free _at the same time_. I applaud this and think they have already succeeded. More power to them; I hope Shuttleworth gets his investment back and then some.

Jon Hancock
http://www.shellshadow.com/

fully agree. I"ve launched a server support tool http://www.shellshadow.com./ Its distro agnostic. The tool, a collaborative terminal client, is derived from open source products. The initial user base is FOSS users. Should the product and service be free? No. If I want to keep the product growing and make money and pay employees, I have to run a business. I can give back to the community and have a meaningful biz model at the same time.

Canonical has been clear for at least two years that it intends to make money off support and other products and keep ubuntu free _at the same time_. I applaud this and think they have already succeeded. More power to them; I hope Shuttleworth gets his investment back and then some.

Jon Hancock
http://www.shellshadow.com/

I have used Ruby and Rails (limited and recently) and Smalltalk (significantly and years ago).
Your question:
"why would you choose a slow-and-expressive language over a fast-and-expressive one?" is something I struggled with when I was choosing a language for my new web app http://www.shellshadow.com/ . I spent too much time on this choice.

My previous company was patternWare (Smalltalk and later Java app frameworks). I knew lots about frameworks. I see Ruby on Rails and say, "its nice but not near as enterprise quality and scalable as what I've built myself". But the bottom line is it is "nice" and "does what it claims for building web apps".

A retrospective on my decision for using Ruby on Rails is:

1 - I'm building a web app as "a part" of my business. Its not the whole of my business. If I build it correctly with Rails, I can always outsource a rewrite in something "more scalable" if need be. This time may never come, but I know that my web app code is very clean due to choosing Rails. Note: As a prior life in building app frameworks, I don't recommend using "magic". I use Rails for the core http request cycle and MVC separation and consider myself using Ruby for the rest of my needs.

2 - Mindshare. My new startup, shellshadow, has two other key components to my technology beside the web app. I need to easily find top talent for each of these three components.

I wanted to use Smalltalk. I also wanted to use Erlang (longer post required).
But the bottom line is I needed to find good talent that could plug into my business as I grew.
Ruby (and Rails) fits "right now". Smalltalk (and Seaside) does not. I can buy more server horsepower. Finding and scaling programmer talent is harder.

Jon

Good reply. You are correct. Trust is something that must be earned and this takes time and great care from the person wanting your trust.

As to http://www.shellshadow.com/ some may prefer to run their own relay server. This is possible and I expect to enable people to run their own relay or to let them study the source.

As the product just launched and hasn't even exposed its business model, I expect early adopters are either blindly trusting the service in environments where trust is mitigated or they are trusting based on recommendation from someone they do trust. This is how most start-ups go about earning trust.

If you have more ideas on how shellshadow can earn trust, please let me know.
I have started a google group to discuss the tech and business model behind shellshadow. http://groups.google.com/group/shellshadow

Thanks for the encouragement, If you or someone you know wants to help with the port to linux/gtk of the shellshadow client (should be easy), I would love to hear from you!!

thanks, Jon

GoToMyPC did not start as a closed source product from Citrix. It started as a closed source product from Expertcity. Expertcity was an unknown and yet people found reasons to trust it and the company grew enough that Citrix acquired it.

In short, The parent comments are pure FUD which can be applied to just about any closed source start-up...And this assumes you automatically trust closed-source software from a large company. This also assumes if it were open source that people have reviewed it in enough detail to be trusted...or that you would completely review the open source and its mods before using the product...highly doubtful.

There may be reasons not to trust any new product. However, broad based FUD slams are counter productive.

In an earlier post on this article, I reference my new product http://www.shellshadow.com/ which is different tech from ShowMyPc, but may suffer from similar FUD attacks. I don't worry too much about these attacks. I'll just do my best to host a trustworthy service and build from there. I have to assume ShowMyPc intends to do the same.

trust is a big topic...
Jon

I just launched a new product, ShellShadow... http://www.shellshadow.com/
By "launched" I mean the site is public for the last 2 weeks but no general announcements yet. Just a few friends testing to make sure its behaving well.
Unlike so many GUI Collaboration tools, ShellShadow is Terminal Client collaboration (light, low bandwidth, and doesn't share your desktop).
The client is derived from PuTTY. I have not released the source to the derived client or the coded-from-scratch relay server. The PuTTY license does not require me to do so.

There are some key questions that should be answered about giving back to the open source community. But nothing can be given back without the company having a stable and growing revenue model.
I welcome meaningful feedback on this business and the use of the various open source technologies it leverages.
Yes, this post is a shill ;-), but a topical one, I hope.

I've looked at ShowMyPC.com and happy to see more action in this market. If they are in violation of some open source agreement, I hope they get it worked out.

enjoy, Jon