Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something? • Hacker News Board

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

#21

Post by immibis » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #12

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`.

Only if your target audience is nerds. Actually a bunch of software is like this and still somehow manages to make money. It's more complicated than typing "make", I promise - I typed "make" three times in this comment and your software didn't materialize.

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

#22

Post by Scene_Cast2 » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

Not the OP, but I have a similar dilemma. I'm currently sitting on a SOTA ML model for a particular niche. I'm trying to figure whether I should try selling it to the incumbents (in some shape or form), or if I should publish a paper on the techniques, and/or if I should OSS it.

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

#23

Post by mike-the-mikado » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:38 PM UTC

bhaney wrote: post #14

No

Is that "No, I never open sourced anything"? Or, "No, I have open sourced things, but never regretted it"?

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

#24

Post by bitbasher » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:41 PM UTC

greyface- wrote: post #15

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…

Whenever I join a company I always create a bunch of made up names on my “prior inventions” list. When I open source something I just name it after something I put on my list if the description is close enough.

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

#25

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

greyface- wrote: post #15

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…

Whenever I see someone on HN talking about their moonlighting or side/hobby project, I get chills and think to myself "Boy, I hope they don't work for $BIGCO, because in all likelihood their existing employer claims IP ownership over that work, and if they ever try to do anything substantial with it, they're going to have corporate lawyers on their case."

I've had experience with a similar "committee" (probably same company) and I concluded the safest path is to just not do side projects while employed with BigTech.

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

#26

Post by rglover » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:47 PM UTC

I regret it only from the perspective that it opens you up to noise from smarmy, entitled, often wildly under-qualified developers trying to "get you" for not knowing something or not having some feature they claim is table stakes.

And if it's not that, it's someone (who very well may be qualified) being unnecessarily passive aggressive trying to make a failure of your own seem like a show stopping nightmare that they'd never let happen.

What I really don't like is that sharing anecdotes like the above often invites equally annoying "tHaT's NoT mY eXpErIeNcE" type comments which leads to a sort of "who cares, just do the best you can and ignore everybody" mindset (which can be helpful at times, damaging at others).

Aside from all of that nonsense, it's great because you have other sets of eyes looking around that may see something you didn't. This is incredibly valuable if you're a soloist or small team working on a big project.

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

#27

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:49 PM UTC

_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.

[deleted]

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

#28

Post by carefulfungi » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:50 PM UTC

sshine wrote: post #17

al_borland wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Flashbacks to the time I copied iCloud pointers/placeholders thinking I was actually copying files with actual data. Oh well, who needed those few years of documents anyway.

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

#29

Post by phkahler » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

galad87 wrote: post #19

I wrote a small app to display a bitrate graph of video files, and posted the code on GitHub with the GPL2 license. A few weeks later someone uploaded it to the Mac App Store and sold it for 7$, the only difference was the name.

If they're not complying with your license terms, sue them. If they are then I guess you missed the boat on money.

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

#30

Post by MSFT_Edging » Tue, Aug 05, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

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 gets complicated when you want your vault accessible across linux/windows/android/macos/ipad.

The ipad is the real stick in the mud and I don't want to deal with an icloud staging zone for everything else, or try to get icloud syncing on linux/android.