You said it - you are indeed being an arsehole in your comments.
Firstly:
"...this could be a story about when _not_ to self-finance your startup"
That's easier said than done. There is absolutely no point in over analysing the situation and then concluding that TinyGrab should have got "outside funding" and "hired people that know more than they do" about the technology involved - because what is done, is done. You are seriously insulting the intelligence of everyone behind TinyGrab if you think they don't already know that version one was problematic. The point here is that the popularity of TinyGrab was never predicted or planned and that it grew from strength to strength entirely organically. At no point did they think about scalability from the outset - so they acknowledged the problem and were rectifying this with a full rewrite in TinyGrab 2. They we're simply unlucky in that they were unable to roll this update out quickly enough - they were hacked before they could complete TinyGrab 2, and therefore did the right thing and released TinyGrab 2 which was very nearly complete anyway. With the lack of income and voluntary manpower they had, they couldn't have changed anything in hindsight at all. So in that respect this was not "full of fail" as you so crudely put it.
Secondly:
What you need to do is put yourself in the shoes of those battling to actually keep TinyGrab online, and realise that they are actually trying their best to respond to every support request and resume the excellent level of service their users have come to expect - and frankly they've almost achieved that now.
What you also need to realise is that those behind TinyGrab are not in it for commercial gain - they are in it because they love the product and their users.
Since this is a completely free service they could have very easily - and might I add completely legally closed TinyGrab as of today, with no risk of litigation against them. They would also most probably refund existing premium users, but would not be legally obliged to.
What they have instead chosen to do, is keep this service online, do their best to get TinyGrab 2 to the bare minimum in order to roll it out completely, and work day and night as a team to respond to every support request and @mention on Twitter to keep users informed and solve their issues individually. I think this is absolutely admirable given their 300,000+ user base and could never be described as "full of fail" especially since the vast proportion of their users do not pay them a penny - and especially since those behind TinyGrab work in their own free time on the project whilst receiving no commercial gain whatsoever.
TinyGrab will easily recover from this over the coming days - all they need at this moment in time is some moral support and some understanding - a bit of slack if you like - not a bunch of anonymous, cynical, patronising and moronic nobodies trying to tell them how it should have been done in hindsight. As I said above, it's frankly just insulting the intelligence of those behind it - any reasonable person can see that they were fully aware of the pitfalls of TinyGrab version one and were trying their best to roll out version two. Give them a break.
Maybe the problem is that I _have_ been in these guys shoes (anyone that has been awakened at 3am with your system completely off line and bleeding money raise your hands).
The fact that it is a volunteer effort is pretty much irrelevant. One does not make worse decisions when one volunteers his/her time.
Rather than nitpick your points against my "full of fail" comment I will say this: The people involved had several choices to make in all of this, before and after the hack. Pretty much the key choices were mistaken: Not having a good backup in place. Not giving a second's thought to how to restore. "Taking the opportunity" to perform a major version change (to an unfinished version, no less) while the system was completely down. And on and on and on.
I really don't get why it matters if it is a volunteer effort or not. Volunteering does not mean "do low quality work", nor does it mean "not mission critical".
Had this all been handled differently, it would have been a "why we were doen for a couple hours yesterday" blog post instead of "why were barely working, and will be for the next few weeks".
Firstly:
"...this could be a story about when _not_ to self-finance your startup"
That's easier said than done. There is absolutely no point in over analysing the situation and then concluding that TinyGrab should have got "outside funding" and "hired people that know more than they do" about the technology involved - because what is done, is done. You are seriously insulting the intelligence of everyone behind TinyGrab if you think they don't already know that version one was problematic. The point here is that the popularity of TinyGrab was never predicted or planned and that it grew from strength to strength entirely organically. At no point did they think about scalability from the outset - so they acknowledged the problem and were rectifying this with a full rewrite in TinyGrab 2. They we're simply unlucky in that they were unable to roll this update out quickly enough - they were hacked before they could complete TinyGrab 2, and therefore did the right thing and released TinyGrab 2 which was very nearly complete anyway. With the lack of income and voluntary manpower they had, they couldn't have changed anything in hindsight at all. So in that respect this was not "full of fail" as you so crudely put it.
Secondly:
What you need to do is put yourself in the shoes of those battling to actually keep TinyGrab online, and realise that they are actually trying their best to respond to every support request and resume the excellent level of service their users have come to expect - and frankly they've almost achieved that now.
What you also need to realise is that those behind TinyGrab are not in it for commercial gain - they are in it because they love the product and their users.
Since this is a completely free service they could have very easily - and might I add completely legally closed TinyGrab as of today, with no risk of litigation against them. They would also most probably refund existing premium users, but would not be legally obliged to.
What they have instead chosen to do, is keep this service online, do their best to get TinyGrab 2 to the bare minimum in order to roll it out completely, and work day and night as a team to respond to every support request and @mention on Twitter to keep users informed and solve their issues individually. I think this is absolutely admirable given their 300,000+ user base and could never be described as "full of fail" especially since the vast proportion of their users do not pay them a penny - and especially since those behind TinyGrab work in their own free time on the project whilst receiving no commercial gain whatsoever.
TinyGrab will easily recover from this over the coming days - all they need at this moment in time is some moral support and some understanding - a bit of slack if you like - not a bunch of anonymous, cynical, patronising and moronic nobodies trying to tell them how it should have been done in hindsight. As I said above, it's frankly just insulting the intelligence of those behind it - any reasonable person can see that they were fully aware of the pitfalls of TinyGrab version one and were trying their best to roll out version two. Give them a break.