I did "open source" my static site generator. No forks, no stars, no PRs. I removed it from github since the only one who's taking advantage of it is probably Microsoft.
Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
41–50 of 454 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#42Yup.
Long long (2016 ish) ago I released an Unreal Engine 4 plugin that let people embed chromium embedded framework views into the engine via textures, so you could make fancy HUDs or whatever.
Epic Games was kind enough to give me a developer grant for open sourcing and making it, cool as hell for a college student at the time, helped pay my classes.
The number of angry game devs who basically wanted me to solve all their problems for them for free was astounding, additionally another dev grant receiver was jealous that I got money close to their grant for “just making a crappy plugin”
(paraphrasing but that was essentially what happened)
No one is ever thankful lol.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#43Not 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.
IMO if you think you can sell to users within the niche, you can publish a blog post of benchmarks and that'll serve as strong technical marketing for your niche.
It also keeps open the option to sell to an incumbent (possibly helps maximize the value of that option as well).
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#44Got death threats because I wasn't prioritizing stuff people were requesting, said nah I'm done
I open sourced a portable benchmark program and was getting angry responses because I wouldn't accept changes to make it Linux-specific.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#45I 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…
In California you can just open source it and do not need permission as long as you did it on personal time on personal hardware without referencing proprietary IP.
Sure, a company could not like you doing that and find a reason to fire you, but they have no valid legal recourse and you may even be able to sue them for wrongful termination.
We are one of the only states that prevents employers from having ownership of your brain on personal time.
Corpos have tried to claim ownership of things I did in my personal time, multiple times. I just show them this law and they back down immediately.
Having rights to my own brain is a big reason I live in California, cost of living be damned.
https://california.public.law/codes/labor_code_section_2870
IANAL, but know your rights!
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#46>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…
> 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 project.
That can literally be a system prompt.
"Here are the core principles of this project [...]. Here is some literature (updated monthly?). Project aims to help in x area, but not sprawl in other areas. Address every issue/PR based on a careful read of the core principles. Blah blah. Use top5 most active users on github as a voting group if score is close to threshold or you can't make an objective judgement based on what you conclude. Blah blah."
Current models are really close to being able to do this, if not fully capable already. Sure, exceptions will happen, but this seems reasonable, no?
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#47Never regretted. But my "things" are far from earth shattering and most have now have better alternatives.
Only one item became a bit popular, but was written for MS-DOS ages ago and I hear it is still used by 1 person :)
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#48Got death threats because I wasn't prioritizing stuff people were requesting, said nah I'm done
were you working on an emulator perchance?
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#49I 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…
Or live in California where forced assignment of personal time IP is illegal.