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Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#411

Post by queenkjuul »

epolanski wrote: post #270
crystal_revenge wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t be naive, these companies don’t care about talent they care about prestige and credentials. @ standford will always beat “did actual work relevant to the project”. Just look at the background of some of the names in this at these places. As always it’s “who you know and where you’ve been” not “what you know and what you’ve built” edit: You can downvote if you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that high stake…

While eventually bias and inefficiency exist in every org, these companies would not be competitive if they prioritized bogus metrics.

Money is falling out of the sky and landing on any company with AI written on it. Yes they would.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#412

Post by queenkjuul »

epolanski wrote: post #363
dash2 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, there are three serious top level AI companies, and the only thing they're competing on right now is the quality of their frontier models. Or arguably their ability to raise cash, in an extremely "buzzy" market....

There's definitely more than 3 companies competing for AI talent and you know that very well. Nvidia, Apple, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Tesla, Microsoft, Mistral and dozens and dozens of well funded AI startups are just among those with more resources.

Apple Tesla and Microsoft arguably really don't count. Microsoft is selling shovels. Tesla is, well, Tesla. Apple is not competing on frontier models, far as i can tell

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#413

Post by queenkjuul »

zero_shift wrote: post #328
epolanski wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While eventually bias and inefficiency exist in every org, these companies would not be competitive if they prioritized bogus metrics.

_Are_ they competitive? So far they all seem to be struggling with sustainable profit. Raising money in a gold rush is easy mode. Surviving the market correction will be the hard part.

They're competitive in the competition of being invested in.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#414

Post by queenkjuul »

cube00 wrote: post #198
arjvik wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you apply through the website/job posting? I’d strongly recommend trying again and reaching out to the friend of a friend who informed you of the role and asking for a more direct intro to the hiring manager. Unfortunately, it’s really really easy to slip through the cracks as a resume, and one feels no remorse rejecting a pdf file. Even without the warm contact, some way of directly reaching the hiring manager (…

>As an aside, does anyone know why the AI labs have such bad recruiters? They're using their own slop generator to handle recruitment.

Surprised anyone needs to ask.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#415

Post by tptacek »

kunzhi wrote: post #401
tomhow wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't comment like this on HN. You may not owe "exposure" any better, but you owe HN better if you want to participate here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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(So far as I can tell I have never said the words "die slow" in my life. I think you have me confused with someone else; my hip hop conversance begins and ends with Tribe and De La Soul. It's "Thomas", by the way.)

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#416

Post by pabs3 »

donatj wrote: post #366

I regret using the MIT License on a couple of my applications that others have picked up and monetized. I do not regret making their source available for people to learn from and extend. I'm not even mad they're making money. I just would have liked, in hindsight, to have used a license that guaranteed me some iota of credit in the finished product. Particularly in things where I built the entire finished product - t…

The MIT license does require attribution, in the form of the copyright notice, which must be included in all copies of the code, including ones built into a binary.

Even if you had made it AGPL, people deliberately violate that all the time, and usually the only recourse is enforcement through costly lawsuits.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#417

Post by pabs3 »

broken_broken_ wrote: post #228

I wrote a toy Kotlin compiler, for fun. Then one day a Jetbrains employee opens an issue which only says: “Why? Just why?”. Maybe it’s the language barrier… but I did not find that particularly polite. On the other hand I open sourced my blog and received lots of small contributions to fix typos or such which were nice.

A toy Kotlin compiler could probably be useful to bootstrap Kotlin from source, without any existing Kotlin binaries. Looks like there is no path to do that right now.

https://bootstrappable.org/projects/jvm-languages.html

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#418

Post by scubbo »

crazygringo wrote: post #407
scubbo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You really think everyone is actually sick on every single sick day, or that every single doctor's appointment on their calendar is a real doctor's appointment? ...I.....used to. Huh.

Hint: a non-trivial proportion of those doctor's appointments are actually interviews at competing firms. There aren't usually a whole lot of other legitimate-sounding reasons for why you'll be out of the office for a 3- or 4-hour chunk...

Increasingly realizing that I'm not cynical enough :'(

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#419

Post by oreally »

neilv wrote: post #396
oreally wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It starts when companies decide they have a right to time outside the employee's official hours and that they shouldn't have to properly reflect it in their employees' salaries, nor in their employment guarantees. And furthermore, as an employee end of the day it's your right to have to be look out for yourself. You probably don't realize that because you're infected with startupitis where everyone has to be all in t…

I do realize that employees have to look out for themselves (because companies, including startups, will usually take, take take from the employee, and then throw away the carcass, if they can). However, employees work in a company with other people, so we'd like to know what we can and can't trust from each other. If a colleague engages in criminal fraud, do they have a rigorous philosophy about when and when not to…

> If a colleague engages in criminal fraud, do they have a rigorous philosophy about when and when not to do that? How do they behave towards the team? Is defrauding the company OK, over something they think they company shouldn't demand anyway, but they will still be honest and responsible towards their teammates? That would be very good to know.

I think the question you're really asking is whether or not they can be trusted down the line so that the system 'works'.

So here's the thing: You can never have a 100% guaranteed trust that someone is going to be doing as the company wills and wishes them to be, even if you have a written contract, and even if you shove a bunch of extra rules in it.

When it comes down to it, people will always have to look out for their best interests eventually, and having extra unneeded rules will push them to think transactionally, system and morals be damned. So the solution would be to treat them well enough to not have them think about it in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

#420

Post by jart »

tw061023 wrote: post #409
jart wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world's most successful open source developer didn't converge on that communication style for no reason. I don't think I've seen a single person bring up the classism inherent in dictating gentlemanly manners. Part of what made open source unique is that people from all classes could participate, and working class people are not tuned to pick up on subtle communication the way the upper classes have been. Linus l…

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