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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?

#101

Post by runjake »

I don't know -- maybe.

I've released several tools, and for most of them, I've heard nothing from anyone.

But 3 got somewhat popular in their niche and most of the inquiries and requests were from people who seemed to think they were entitled to free support and feature requests. Many times, they got pretty rude if I refused to implement their feature or I took too long to release a fix.

It really turned me off from releasing open source code and then interacting with users. I'd rather just release the code, and forget about it, only patching on my own terms.

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

#102

Post by tharne »

bitbasher wrote: post #24
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.

That is insanely clever. Love it.

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

#103

Post by _lvbh »

zaggle wrote: post #80
_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fixed all the "vulnerabilities" that let you change the sync and publish endpoints and now I'm still stuck using a very outdated version.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.

Why not create your own plugin? Or use Syncthing, Git, LiveSync, Remotely Save, etc...

I wanted it to work on IOS. None of those were viable. In terms of why not my own plugin, that's just pure incompetence. I don't know TypeScript that well while getting the API done only took a few days. I tried working on a plugin later on for sync but found the docs difficult to follow. In the end, it wasn't worth the effort and I've gone back to just neovim and syncthing. For IOS, I'm sideloading my own app written with fyne (Go) but functionality is really basic.

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

#104

Post by tharne »

kstrauser wrote: post #71
lrvick wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Note that this is also an enormous part of the reason why CA is a world tech hub. I hear other US states claiming they want to build a similar reputation. “So, you’ll pass laws giving employees ownership of their own personal projects they make on their own time?” “LOL, no!” “Alright, good luck Tupelo.”

The other big reason is their glorious refusal to honor non-compete clauses. As I understand it, this was a big reason a lot of tech companies moved from Boston to CA back in the day.

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

#105

Post by pentamassiv »

I am the maintainer of a library to simulate keyboard and mouse input. I didn't start the project but took over the maintenance and have since rewritten pretty much all of the code. I recently found out that Anthropic is shipping it in Claude Desktop for some unreleased feature which is probably like "Computer Use". I noticed they had an open position in exactly the team responsible for the implementation and applied. A few months later I received a rejection. The letter said that the team doesn't have the time to review any more candidates. The code is under MIT so everything is perfectly fine. It is great that a company like Anthropic is using my code, but it would have been nice to benefit from it. I wrote a slightly longer blog post about the topic here:

https://grell.dev/blog/ai_rejection

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

#106

Post by carlosjobim »

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…

Why in the world would you arrange things in that way?

1. A project exists

2. A user forks the project

3. A user writes a feature request

4. The AI codes up the changes and puts it into the fork

5. The original project is left untouched

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

#107

Post by keysdev »

_lvbh wrote: post #103
zaggle wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not create your own plugin? Or use Syncthing, Git, LiveSync, Remotely Save, etc...

I wanted it to work on IOS. None of those were viable. In terms of why not my own plugin, that's just pure incompetence. I don't know TypeScript that well while getting the API done only took a few days. I tried working on a plugin later on for sync but found the docs difficult to follow. In the end, it wasn't worth the effort and I've gone back to just neovim and syncthing. For IOS, I'm sideloading my own app writte…

Did you see: https://t-shaped.nl/posts/synctrain-a-rethought-ios-client-f...

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

#108

Post by collingreen »

erulabs wrote: post #99

When I was ~14 I open sourced a script to autoconfigure X11's xrandr. It was pretty lousy, had several bugs. I mentioned it on a KDE mailing list and a KDE core contributor told me it was embarrassing code and to kill myself. I took it pretty hard and didn't contribute to KDE or X11 ever again, probably took me about a year to build up the desire to code again. Everything else I've open-sourced has gone pretty well,…

I'm sorry that happened. That is monstrously bad behavior.

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

#109

Post by jasonjmcghee »

pentamassiv wrote: post #105

I am the maintainer of a library to simulate keyboard and mouse input. I didn't start the project but took over the maintenance and have since rewritten pretty much all of the code. I recently found out that Anthropic is shipping it in Claude Desktop for some unreleased feature which is probably like "Computer Use". I noticed they had an open position in exactly the team responsible for the implementation and applied…

Thank you for enigo / all you do and your support when I used the library in my little project!

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

#110

Post by collingreen »

em-bee wrote: post #92
kstrauser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Go fork yourself.”

i'd go with "go fork it yourself". more correct, and less direct. makes it more like a creative insult where the recipient has to think whether they have actually been insulted or not.

I've enjoyed using "Looking forward to your fork/PR!" for a long time now. Caveat: I dont have any big projects nor anything that brings me money or fame. It is possible my slightly snarky responses have limited the projects' potential so consider what you're trying to get out of your open source before following any advice.
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