Punchfork shutdown inspires Open Recipes

Startups that are based on user-contributed content are based on fraud in the sense that they imply to their users that the contributed data will always be available. But it's a lie, the user's data is only being used to explore a potential market. If the market idea proves successful the company will be sold and shutdown. If the idea is unsuccessful it will also be shutdown.<p>Startups should be required to tell users upfront with a big warning that the business is not profitable, how many months of runway the startup has, and that all data could be lost at any point.

Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong but Punchfork scraped their recipe content from other sites? Is it possible there is a data tainting issue here? Hard to reconcile Jeff's comments about user archive and the stuff on the web site, but that said I wasn't a user so I don't know if they sent an email with a download link or something.

Interesting that this is written by one half of the Analog Folk/Fictive Kin co-op.<p>These guys are responsible for Mapalong, a (formally great) mapping service that they abandoned early last year and for which they ignore any requests for exported data (I've been asking for a .KML file for a year to move my points somewhere else).

As a fairly regular user of Punchfork, I definitely wish it were still around, but this feels self-entitled.<p>Let's not forget that the data Punchfork is letting users take out is the exact information they put in: a list of liked recipes. The original recipe data is just one click away.<p>I'm not sure how this is any different than a personal Twitter archive; it contains only your tweets, not those of the folks you interacted with.

Lovely subtext in the last section.<p>Good on you guys for not rising to Jeff's stubborn/dismissive attitude.

You young 'uns. Do you not remember S.O.A.R.?<p>SOAR had its beginnings in 1993 when someone collected all the recipes she found on Usenet and mailing lists while at UCB.<p>In 1995 she put the archive on the web as "SOAR" .. the "Searchable Online Archive of Recipies".<p>In 2001, that moved from (IIRC) a subdomain of UCB and became "Recipe Source" and can still be found at <a href="http://www.recipesource.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.recipesource.com/</a><p>It's very old now, and majorly lacking in features. But then I've never found a recipe site that gave me everything I needed.

On Usenet in the 1990s, people used to whine if they weren't given attribution for the work they did scanning and uploading somebody else's published porn photographs.<p>Punchfork's attitude here seems similar.

Has anybody ever succeeded in applying the distributed development approach (forking, pull requests, multiple branches and variations) to recipes?

We're in #openrecipes on Freenode if anyone would like to join us.

I could see posthaven turning into an API that any site could integrate with so that users knew their data was safe. Depending on the site and type of user data, this type of exportability/backupability could be a real differentiating feature.

I'm surprised the ArchiveTeam / archive.org scrape of Punchfork before it was removed didn't also get a mention in all this mess.<p><a href="http://archive.org/details/archiveteam_punchfork" rel="nofollow">http://archive.org/details/archiveteam_punchfork</a>

I hear a lot of grief about companies shutting down. And I get it, if I spent a lot of time on Punchfork or Google Reader I would be bummed out.<p>However I can still see the good that will come, yummly already jumped at creating an API replacement much like feedly promises to be an alternative for google reader.<p>By the way, is ending your startup in "ly" the new fad in the technosphere?

I long ago stopped replying to posts and comments that anger me for their negativity and bullshit, but none has made me as furious as this one.<p>Disclaimer: After reaching out to him cold, Jeff Miller was an informal advisor to me for over a year providing valuable insights and advice, not to mention moral support, as we built our company. He did this for no reason other than his dedication to helping a fellow entrepreneur. Over dozens of email exchanges and in-person get togethers, he proved hands down, to be one of the most helpful, friendly, altruistic people I've met in the valley. After a year building up this friendship and trust, he invested in our company, and he is consistently one of the first people I reach out to when I have real founder issues to discuss.<p>The OP has literally ZERO idea what reasons Jeff has for his decisions about the data on his site, not the least of which could be legal restrictions of the acquisition. They provided, what looks like, ZERO background on why they wanted to talk to someone who was incredibly busy transitioning a startup into the hands of a new parent company. Jeff was as polite as he needed to be when he responded to a completely context-less request for a call with, "I'm sorry I can't right now." The OP does not know, beyond building a startup worth acquiring, and transitioning it, what else someone might have on their plate that would prevent them from having time to chat with someone who failed to provide any reason for their request. Then, when Jeff asked point blank whether the OP was scraping data from his site, they responded with an ambiguous, "not trying to do anything uncool. Still super eager to talk more. Happy to do so anytime."<p>The OP apparently does not have to <i>try</i> to do something uncool. This entire situation is unbelievably uncool, from the beginning of the communication, to their actions in between, to this post. The only thing more shocking than the sense of entitlement displayed here, is that they, or anybody here, thinks this post documents anything other than a pure display of arrogance and entitlement by the OP. They approached this whole situation with such a stark lack of professionalism that it would be laughable if they hadn't also decided to smear one of the nicest people I know in the process.<p>This post reflects an attitude that is a shining example of so many things wrong in the startup community, from the sense of entitlement, to the lack of common courtesy, to the manipulation of a situation for personal gain at the expense of others. It is so unreal how easily people seek to tear down others, and worse, how quickly smart people jump on the bullshit bandwagon.<p>This post is a joke. Nobody owes you anything because they built a site you enjoyed. If anybody owes anybody anything, the OP owes Jeff Miller an apology for this time wasting bullshit.

So yet another business gets it's start by only using content from another site(s) via data scraping, and they are upset that their source of content was acquired and shutdown? Cry me a river...<p>This reminds me of the Craigslist/Pad-Mapper event, except that Craigslist hasn't been acquired.

I felt the same way when I first read about the acquisition/shutdown. Like the idea.<p>As a replacement I found <a href="http://www.yummly.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.yummly.com/</a> today.

on a related note, does anyone know whatever happened to foodieview.com? I lost a lot of recipe links when it unceremoniously disappeared.

What exactly is the motivating factor for an acquired website (especially one acquired by a large successful media company) to care about how you feel with their service?<p>&#62;large amount of work into scraping those sites<p>I think this states clearly the founders attitude about data rights. It's the Wild West out there still.