Future of Hastebin

[o-y]

As of the ~26th Oct 2021, Hastebin has been acquired by Toptal. A few general questions:

• Is there an official statement about the acquirement and any long term plans - including maintenance of this repository?
• Will hastebin.com continue to redirect to toptal.com/developers/hastebin as long as Toptal hosts the service?
• Is the top bar[1] "Apply as a Freelancer" advertisement permanent or will it be moved to a less obnoxious location?

1:

[ThiefMaster]

IMHO there is no future:

• obnoxious white bar on top
• obnoxiously long URL instead of the nice short one - https://hastebin.com/<id> vs https://www.toptal.com/developers/hastebin/<id>

I don't know who at toptal thought this would be a good idea. You probably managed to piss off almost every single hastebin user to the extent that they're not going to use your main product(s) if there's a competitor (which I'm sure there is) that did NOT leave this bad impression before.

[Atulin]

https://gitignore.io was also acquired by Toptal, it also broke any and all API integrations, and it also has an obnoxious URL.

hastebin.com is dead and buried, time to either self-host or use an alternative like https://pastie.io or some such

[mcarneiro]

Hello @o-y, Toptal has acquired this project and we are still in the migration phase, meaning that we have moved it to our infrastructure, and we will be working on the re-design. The plan is to invest and improve it by not only re-designing it, but also keeping the code up-to-date, and fully covered by tests.

The hastebin.com domain will continue to exist, but it'll be redirected to www.toptal.com/developers/hastebin, as this is the way we operate.

The top bar is just a temporary notification on the published website. In the future, the published version will stay under the Toptal website structure, but the open-source/self-hosted version will be clean. The idea is to keep this project open and free forever, giving the possibility for users to contribute and self-host if they prefer.

We have a dedicated team for this type of projects as one of our goals is to contribute to the open-source community.

[Heath123]

[bbatsov]

I get that you're frustrated, but my colleague @mcarneiro already answered here that:

• The current design is temporary and will be improved
• We're going to remove the company branding from the self-hosted version
• The old domain is still available as a redirect (and will never go away), so it's no one has to remember the new one if they don't want to.

As @mcarneiro mentioned our company has a lot of love for the OSS community, we welcome all feedback and we'll be doing our best to improve the project going forward. I get that people are disappointed right now, but I assure you there's nothing to be alarmed about - Toptal's backing will be beneficial for the project in the long run.

Your design concerns have been heard and we'll work to address them. We're committed to maintaining the project.
I'm asking everyone to just bear with us for a bit and give us some time to prove you that future of Hastebin is bright.

[Heath123]

I submitted that and took the screenshot before I saw this issue, so sorry about things that might be wrong in there, but I'm more worried about ugly long looking URLs that will confuse people into thinking I'm posting something endorsed or created by Toptal (or that I work for Toptal) when the old URL was perfectly fine, is there anything you can do about that? I suppose I could convert everything to an old URL first (maybe with a script or browser extension) but that does sort of defeat the point of it being really simple to use without having to go through multiple steps. Thanks for taking the time to reply, though.

[ThiefMaster]

The problem is that nobody will want to share a link like https://www.toptal.com/developers/hastebin/naqazuhoke.foo on IRC - it feels like a spam link. That was not the case with the old hastebin link - https://hastebin.com/naqazuhoke.foo on the other hand is a nice and short link. But even if you provide a way to copy it, the redirect makes it 1) more cumbersome to copy (developers are lazy, they copy from the address bar and 2) there's the redirect which is ugly because someone opening the link will ask themselves WTF they are doing on toptal dot com.

So if you really have "a lot of love for the OSS community", then there is only one good solution:

• revert to the original domain
• replace the big banner with something inconspicuous, e.g. a "powered by toptal" below or next to the hastebin logo or as a small (no crazy contrast difference!) footer

[bbatsov]

We won't be reverting to the original domain (the current URL just follows our standard structure for development tools & utilities maintained by us - same as with http://www.toptal.com/developers/gitignore for instance), but I acknowledge that for sharing purposes the new URL is definitely not convenient as it's quite long. We'll think on the best course of action here - one thing that immediately comes to mind is to just add a button to copy a shortened version of the URL.

[nocturn9x]

Way to go and ruin one of the few decent pastebin hosting services. Good job toptal, you've gained a new hater

[nocturn9x]

We won't be reverting to the original domain (the current URL just follows our standard structure for development tools & utilities maintained by us - same as with http://www.toptal.com/developers/gitignore for instance), but I acknowledge that for sharing purposes the new URL is definitely not convenient as it's quite long. We'll think on the best course of action here - one thing that immediately comes to mind is to just add a button to copy a shortened version of the URL.

Honestly: fuck off, lol. Nice EEE move you pulled here, Microsoft would be proud. Thanks for proving us how even the simplest changes can kill good open source projects

[ThiefMaster]

TBH I don't think attacking individuals is the right solution here. The guy is probably "just" a developer working at the company and has to back their - certainly shitty - decision, regardless of whether he agrees with it or not. Zero love for the company and whatever executive or marketing person thought this was a good idea though.

[mcarneiro]

Thank you all for the feedback. As I mentioned before, the current implementation is temporary and we will update the UI and codebase soon. We will consider other options for the information banner during this migration phase, as the main idea was to simply announce Toptal's acquisition of the site (we didn't want people to be surprised by the new URL).

About the long URL address, currently that is the place inside the Toptal domain that holds these sort of tools, but now that we are aware of your concern we can implement a "share" mechanic using a URL shortener in the new version to be released.

[Craftzman7]

We won't be reverting to the original domain (the current URL just follows our standard structure for development tools & utilities maintained by us - same as with http://www.toptal.com/developers/gitignore for instance)

gitignore.io has that scroll bar of ads at the bottom. Would that ever be added to Hastebin? You said you guys are gonna remove the bar at the top in the future. I just wanna know if you guys are gonna end up adding something like that.

[oijdfdg]

Yup, congratulations, you did it! You fucked up 2 things that were going VERY good for you. You were even given a second chance with hastebin. Congratulations. You've earned a new hater once again.

[chrismccoy]

long url is not good

[chrismccoy]

Hey. I was very excited about seeing new commits, but this excitement switched to disappointment after seeing what commits were made.

And now I'm seeing this 6 month old issue. I think the first three comments are right. This project was (sadly) only bought just to kill it. And even after 6 months.. NOTHING has changed expect some typos and a bot which closes every PR/Issue automatically after some time of "inactivity".

The ugly banner is still there, the ugly extremely long url is still there (and no, "tHiS iS hOw OuR pRoJeCtS aRe OrGaNiZeD" isn't a valid argument, it's trash). And - who had expected it - no "promised" redesign, nor development were made.

The plan is to invest and improve it by not only re-designing it, but also keeping the code up-to-date, and fully covered by tests.

Bullshit. Nothing happened and I guess, nothing will ever happen.

We have a dedicated team for this type of projects as one of our goals is to contribute to the open-source community.
[...] our company has a lot of love for the OSS community, we welcome all feedback and we'll be doing our best to improve the project going forward.

Who the hell are you kidding? Who are you trying to make you believe? 5 year olds? The company does not show any interest in the OSS community. You're not contributing to anything and "we didn't made it closed source (yet)" is no achievement nor contribution in any way. The company is just trying to fill their portfolio, to get more customers. And this "dedicated team" either doesn't exist or they all died on a mysterious way.

I know you're just normal employees, that's why I tried as good as I can not to attack you, only the company.

And I also know, I'll boycott everything which has to do with this company, at least until something in the company philosophy is changing.

Im guessing they only bought the project because they want to promote their on toptal main site, this is the case for all the projects they have aquired.

[nocturn9x]

I'm here 6 months later and what do I see? Exactly what I expected. This ridiculously fucking delusional of a company trying to exploit the name of a good OSS project for PR. You guys are a disgusting cancer and should go out of business

[chrismccoy]

I'm here 6 months later and what do I see? Exactly what I expected. This ridiculously fucking delusional of a company trying to exploit the name of a good OSS project for PR. You guys are a disgusting cancer and should go out of business

same with them buying gitignore.io to only have the site littered with a scrolling ticker of job openings for toptal. none of the projects they will aquire will have any further development. just a chance to promote their own products

[USMP-lancer]

i used to see hastebin links, i don't anymore

[JeswinSunsi]

MAKE IT DISMISSIBLE FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE. It's been seven months and none of the UI changes you promised have shown up. All that's happened is the ugly white promo banner became an ugly black promo banner. Make it dismissible at least for the love of God.

[oijdfdg]

MAKE IT DISMISSIBLE FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE. It's been seven months and none of the UI changes you promised have shown up. All that's happened is the ugly white promo banner became an ugly black promo banner. Make it dismissible at least for the love of God.

@JeswinSunsi,
I strongly advise you not to use the new official hastebin. Toptal won't listen to developers and the site is total garbage now. Don't expect anything new and the most you can do is use another instance (like https://paste.pythondiscord.com) or host your own.

[Craftzman7]

https://paste.hep.gg is a pretty good one as well.

[gOOvER]

why are you crying? fork the Project and let toptal out

[evwltrs]

It's now been moved back to the https://hastebin.com domain