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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?

#11

Post by bruce511 »

sexyman48 wrote: post #2

Steve Ballmer nailed it when he said GPL is a cancer. No professional programmer wants to open source anything, but once one competitor does it, he must follow suit to stay competitive.

Um not down voting you, but your argument has some flaws.

Firstly your appeal to authority , and then using Steve Ballmer as your authority is perhaps not the best way to start.

Secondly you say that "no professional programmer" - but the statement is false. For starters it's a sweeping generalization which is trivial to show is untrue for at least 1 programmer.

Thirdly the existence of Open Source alternatuve does not make a product uncompetitive. You need look no further than Windows to see that's true. Indeed if we has to list all the commercial software that exists with an Ooen Source clone, we'd be here all day. I'd also argue that Joe public doesn't even know what open source is, much less factors it into a buying decision.

If you are building tools for programmers (already a tiny niche target market) then you need a hook other than Open Source anyway, cause programmers are a terrible target market.

I say this as someone who builds tools for programmers, and who sells commercial into a space that contains Open Source alternatives. And I do ok.

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

#12

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

I've open sourced a few things in the past that I wish I could have kept closed source for monetization purposes. Probably a failure of some imagination on my part, but also, it's really hard to make and sell good desktop software if a user can make their own for free by typing `make`.

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

#13

Post by nkrisc »

al_borland wrote: post #9
_lvbh wrote: post #5

I regret open sourcing my reverse engineering of Obsidian Sync. I did it mostly for personal use but thought it might be useful for others. After a bit of cat and mouse, they fixed all the "vulnerabilities" that let you change the sync and publish endpoints and now I'm still stuck using a very outdated version. I recently found another way to get it working on IOS again but definitely not publishing it.

I always just stick my Obsidian vault in iCloud and called it a day. No additional sync service required.

This works very well, been doing it for years. Even works flawlessly for me on Windows using the iCloud client.

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

#15

Post by greyface- »

I tried to open source a weekend personal project while at $BIGCO via their "Invention Assignment Review Committee". It turned into a minor bureaucratic nightmare and I was ultimately never given the OK to release it, or any clarity over whether my employer was choosing to assert an IP ownership interest in it. In retrospect, I wish I had never notified them of its existence, and released it under a pseudonym instead.

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

#16

Post by pavel_lishin »

al_borland wrote: post #10
incomingpain wrote: post #3

>Maybe it became a burden to maintain, This is literally why i think AI coding cant touch dev jobs. In theory you can code LOADS of projects. Want a panel widget on your desktop environment, dont even know what language its in? ask ai to produce it. but when you have open source projects, people from all over the world bring their requests and problems to you. Some are great to just merge, others you have no clue wha…

Isn’t this the thing AI is going to claim to solve? A project exists, a user writes a feature request, the AI codes up the changes, pushes a new release, and everyone is happy. That’s the sales pitch. The big issue with this, even if it works perfectly every time, is that there is no one at the core of the project with some vision and taste, who is willing to say “no” to bad ideas or things outside the scope of the p…

Everything will look like PHP functions.

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

#17

Post by sshine »

al_borland wrote: post #9
_lvbh wrote: post #5

I regret open sourcing my reverse engineering of Obsidian Sync. I did it mostly for personal use but thought it might be useful for others. After a bit of cat and mouse, they fixed all the "vulnerabilities" that let you change the sync and publish endpoints and now I'm still stuck using a very outdated version. I recently found another way to get it working on IOS again but definitely not publishing it.

I always just stick my Obsidian vault in iCloud and called it a day. No additional sync service required.

This worked for me until iCloud started cache clearing all my files aggressively so my vault would take ten minutes to open on iPhone. Every few days.

When I tried to copy my vault off iCloud, the copy failed and two years of notes were permanently lost.

I’m never putting anything of value in iCloud again.

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

#18

Post by plumbees »

incomingpain wrote: post #3

>Maybe it became a burden to maintain, This is literally why i think AI coding cant touch dev jobs. In theory you can code LOADS of projects. Want a panel widget on your desktop environment, dont even know what language its in? ask ai to produce it. but when you have open source projects, people from all over the world bring their requests and problems to you. Some are great to just merge, others you have no clue wha…

Never done open source but always wanted to. Developers of open source could always ask for a fee to add features, and easy prs are easy prs. But for those more complicated things that don't interest the main owners, could they offer a PR service where if you pay the developers or the project a fee, they'll take the time to review the PR and tell you what to do for it to be accepted, or keep a 5$ review fee and return the rest if it's just not a feature that jives with the project's overarching goals. I don't see why that cannot be a piece of the market. It would still be open source but it would add incentive to say a project is worth doing.

Albeit I'm sure that most would likely not be willing to pay to have their code reviewed and accepted in a project; but on another hand, if I wanted to contribute to GNUCash and I didn't want to read the manual, or I found the manual hard to understand, it would be like paying for training. So it can in certain cases be win-win.

And if it is a feature that is wanted, then there's no worry about it being reviewed. Or having to pay because the value will be obvious to the creators who will take it on.

In other words: Pay the developer/maintainer to care about the feature you want.

Has this ever been attempted and successful?

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

#20

Post by nickthegreek »

al_borland wrote: post #9
_lvbh wrote: post #5

I regret open sourcing my reverse engineering of Obsidian Sync. I did it mostly for personal use but thought it might be useful for others. After a bit of cat and mouse, they fixed all the "vulnerabilities" that let you change the sync and publish endpoints and now I'm still stuck using a very outdated version. I recently found another way to get it working on IOS again but definitely not publishing it.

I always just stick my Obsidian vault in iCloud and called it a day. No additional sync service required.

Can this work with a windows or nix system in the mix?
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