I regret everything I ever open sourced my works had one condition: attribution now it's all been slopped up by "AI", without attribution, primarily to devalue the labour of software developers
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Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
141–150 of 454 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yep, that’s another huge benefit.
The short version is, what do you know, if you make it easy for smart people to start new companies for their big ideas, they’ll do it. And if you don’t? You don’t become a tech hub, no matter what else you’re doing.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#143Yup. 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 al…
I always wonder about this. I use open source software but I'm never close / in proximity to the developers enough to say thanks.
The folks who are in proximity, folks with requests and complaints.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#144Got death threats because I wasn't prioritizing stuff people were requesting, said nah I'm done
were you working on an emulator perchance?
I've only recently had exposure to just a bit of the emulator world. Even the nice people aren't nice. No idea what the story is there but wow.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#145My current position is a source available license for any product I am working on solo. You can definitely get at the source code, but I'm gonna make you pay me money first and sign an NDA.
I strongly believe in the principles of OSS for things like frameworks and tools that everyone in the community can benefit from. But, when it comes to extremely complex end products like Word, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc., it's a lot harder for me to buy the community-is-better argument. Even in some cases the frameworks & tools being semi-proprietary has major benefits (.NET/Visual Studio dev experience).
There are tradeoffs with everything. The key is focusing on the customer. Who do you want to keep around as your customer? You aren't going to make everyone happy. Someone is always going to be pissed at your particular approach. Might as well take a path that makes you a little bit of money if you can.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#146I 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…
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 (notably: not the recruiters!) would mean that “I wrote that library!@ becomes front-and-center, not buried as a line item. I’ve seen so much more success with myself and the people I know in cold or warm outreach than through job application portals. In fact, I’ve yet to get a callback from a single job I’ve ever applied to online!
As an aside, does anyone know why the AI labs have such bad recruiters? I successfully got a job at one and am currently working there, but I still have many many complaints about the process.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#147I 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…
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Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#148I wrote a network security tool (if you can call a glorified shell script that) and it was used by script kiddies to harass people. It made me feel maybe magicians had something, when they decided some knowledge should be esoteric and earned, given that it was so trivial I never listed it on my CV. I think infosec, as a field, sometimes darts between too much obscurity and too much openness.
Wizards you mean?
I certainly keep my own "grimoire" of useful code.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#149Steve 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 n…
Quoting Steve Ballmer doesn't mean that the person is worshipping Steve Ballmer as a god. It just means that another person expressed a similar opinion.
Re: Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scenario is someone in a work environment, lying and defrauding in signed documents. Where does the workplace dishonesty start and end? Does the person think that their colleagues have the same rules, or different rules? How does that affect their work environment? (Incidentally, I'm sick of HN downvoting legitimate comments.)
Ok, but corporations also lie to and defraud their employees all the time . In ways large and small. Nobody is entirely honest to everyone about everything in their workplace. 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? People never make excuses to their manager that are lies? Managers never lie to the…
> 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.