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."
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
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.
We're very much committed to that statement, we wouldn't say it otherwise :)
Maybe a document converting feature (via pandoc!?) would help the merged product :) (And I would totally pay for that :D)
That's a fairly disengenous answer to the question. The code is AGPLv3+ licensed and they are not the sole copyright holder (it is true that that have a CLA[1] but from a quick reading the CLA says that they "agree to also license the Contribution under the terms of the license or licenses which We are using for the Material on the Submission Date").
What people want to know is whether ShareLaTeX is going to just become a tiny free software part of a larger proprietary platform. It appears to me that this is likely going to be the case, which is a real shame since I've always respected that the entireity of ShareLaTeX was AGPLv3+.
I hope ShareLaTeX doesn't become another victim of "Our Incredible Journey"[2].
[1]: https://sharelatex.wufoo.com/forms/sharelatex-contributor-li... [2]: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
I hope what you say is true about the commitment to open source.
Good luck with the product merge. Don't wreck it with complexity :)
Just to confirm, the goal here is to say that the open source will not be left to rot in the corner, its going to remain at the centre of the company. You will see updates and improvements coming in the future.
I think overleaf should publicize this feature more prominently.
It's those small GUI aspects that really made me appreciate ShareLaTeX.
ShareLaTeX is excellent for collaboration, but I much prefer a local setup when that's unnecessary.
Side question for the overleaf team: do you have any plans to make overleaf truly ios compatible? Yes, I know I can open it in the browser just fine (and kudos for that!), but when it takes 3 taps for every backslash or brace I need, it really doesn't work to do much more than minor modifications to existing documents. There really needs to be an easier way of typing the punctuation needed.
On your side question: it's a tricky one, as although we do try to keep pace with the different browser updates to keep in the in-browser experience ok on ios, I agree it's not ideal. Long term we do want to do something better, but it's not an immediate priority (given that mobile use of Overleaf for editing is still relatively low, and we find that a lot of tablet users use separate keyboards). Hope that helps clarify, even if I don't have an immediate solution!
I hope this partnership means we'll soon have the ShareLaTeX frontend on top of the Overleaf backend. That would be a truly powerful combination.
I'm optimistic that you do the transition, with Open Source.
Although most users of LaTeX are in the STEM fields, they're also way too busy with actual research to find joy in dicking around with command-line tools.
I think the computer field is unusual in that computer people think everyone must be dying to learn The Way even if it costs them time and (from their perspective at least) risks significant losses. Doctors advise diet and exercise, but don't find it puzzling when people don't.
Also they support collaborative editing and adding editor notes to a document.
It's significantly easier to do collaborative editing of latex files with such a web service. But even a single person might want to use them, because maintaining latex dependencies can be bothersome.
It can be a lift to get non-computer-savvy folks to use a highly-managed system like ShareLatex (which is a great system). But it would be impossible (not merely difficult) to do so if "just use git for collaboration" is your message!
If a lot of your documents are collaborative, this turns out to be a major factor. (For my personal work, I'm happy to use Emacs and TeXshop and keep all files resident on my laptop.)
I recently typeset a (stunning looking) master thesis for a friend and she was able to edit the text while I dealt with formatting, setting stuff up, etc. (Well for that project, also big props to pandoc [1], as it easily converted docx to tex including footnotes!)
Otherwise it's nice, because I set up shared projects with good looking CVs for some non-tech friends and even a template to write nice looking letters/invoices and they know what to change and how and I could hide most of the stuff going on in template files.
[1]: http://pandoc.org/
LaTeX is from the 80s. I understand it has grown over time, but to >1GB? That's huge, even for modern standards, for just a typesetting program. The documentation is a dependency that seems to be forced on you (it's not an optional dependency in Debian), and fonts are also big. But even without that, you're left with about 600MB if I recall correctly which is still huge for just formatting text right?
It's clean, fast, not clunky, it just does what it's supposed to. I wish you all the best, guys.
I mean, I don't really care about Shia LaBeouf, but I'm unfamiliar with ShareLaTeX and Overleaf so I keep pausing on this headline as I parse it.
