bits and bikes

I’ve recently been playing around with Etherpad, which was generously open-sourced by Google after they acquired AppJet. It is a fantastic piece of work, and I’ve enjoyed exploring the source code and brainstorming new applications for the technology.

My favorite find, so far, is this function in team_billing_control.js:

function _processPaypalPurchase() {
  var domain = domains.getRequestDomainId();
  billing.log({type: "paypal-attempt",
               domain: domain,
               message: "Someone tried to use paypal to pay for on-demand."+
                " They got an error message. If this happens a lot, we should implement paypal."})
  java.lang.Thread.sleep(5000);
  _validationError('billingPurchaseType', "There was an error contacting PayPal. Please try another payment type.")
}

I read this as a sign of a Lean Startup in action.