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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?

#151

Post by Aurornis »

Not personally, but twice in my career I’ve been part of interview loops with people who had created semi-famous open source projects. Projects that you’ve heard of if you read a lot of HN, but not so critical that you couldn’t think of another alternative if it disappeared.

Both of them expressed regret for not commercializing it. The weird part for me, as the interviewer, was hearing them imagine how wealthy they’d be if they had commercialized it instead of releasing it as open source, entirely neglecting the fact that the projects became popular because they were open source.

I imagine this is the thought process behind the various projects that try to go closed-source and commercial after a certain point.

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

#152

Post by justusthane »

firefax wrote: post #70

I 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.

What did the script do? I promise I’m just curious and not a script kiddy

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

#153

Post by grepfru_it »

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,…

Oh wow old war wounds from teenage days opened up.

My friend kept locking himself out of root and would be forced to single user the system to recover. This was difficult for many reasons, including remote hands costing up to and including $50 per call. I decided to look into why su would only work with root. Found a very simple check that I thought was unreasonable. Made my first patch and proudly posted to the FreeBSD mailing list thinking I was going to change the world. Man, instead I come back to everyone chewing me a new one, calling my friend too dumb to use FreeBSD, and other things that was not rooted in reality. I didn’t even try to defend my patch, I had spent so much time evangelizing FreeBSD up to that point that it really made me question my support of the project.

Anyway fast forward like 5 years, I was telling the story to coworkers when I decided to look up the su source. shocked-pikachu someone took my patch and applied it (without attribution). I have since moved on from FreeBSD entirely and my open sourced works have never been so negatively picked apart again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#154

Post by bravesoul2 »

arjvik wrote: post #146
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…

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 (…

Anthropic has a tough alignment interview. Like I aced the coding screener but got rejected after a chat about values. I think they want intense people on the value/safety side as well as the chops.

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

#155

Post by rideontime »

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,…

And people wonder why Codes of Conduct became popular...

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

#156

Post by ineedasername »

Aurornis wrote: post #151

Not personally, but twice in my career I’ve been part of interview loops with people who had created semi-famous open source projects. Projects that you’ve heard of if you read a lot of HN, but not so critical that you couldn’t think of another alternative if it disappeared. Both of them expressed regret for not commercializing it. The weird part for me, as the interviewer, was hearing them imagine how wealthy they’d…

Possibly also their way if boasting, eg, "look this thing I did is so great I could be rich off of it!" When they may mean it much less in the way of regret than "hey, I do very valuable work, you should hire me"

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

#157

Post by bravesoul2 »

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…

Needs a GNU GPLJ license. You can use this for commercial purposes only if you offer the copyright holder a job.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by ahaucnx »

We went full in and not only open sourced the firmware of our air quality monitors but made it completely open source hardware, this means it includes the electronic schematics, enclosure files etc. [1]

I believe it was the single most important decision we took as a company and probably also contributed to a large part to the growth and success we are having now. It enables us to build a really strong community, and also differentiate ourselves clearly from other manufacturers that are all pretty much only offering proprietary solutions.

But I think people need to be aware that by open sourcing, they put the company on a different trajectory. For example you are basically making yourself a lot less attractive for VCs.

When I see how much other companies can get investments that help them grow faster and make more impact is the only times when I sometimes wonder if other models might have been a better option?

[1] https://www.airgradient.com/documentation/overview/

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

#160

Post by dangus »

Aurornis wrote: post #151

Not personally, but twice in my career I’ve been part of interview loops with people who had created semi-famous open source projects. Projects that you’ve heard of if you read a lot of HN, but not so critical that you couldn’t think of another alternative if it disappeared. Both of them expressed regret for not commercializing it. The weird part for me, as the interviewer, was hearing them imagine how wealthy they’d…

The only way to escape wage slavery without being born wealthy is to be a business owner and have that business scale.

I can see why people have these fantasies. Huge businesses have been built on open source code bases.

Many of us spend our lives writing software that has lasting benefit for our employers but our reward is a flat hourly fee.

The place where I disagree with your take is that commercialization and open source popularity are not mutually exclusive at all. The FSF makes this quite clear: open source is 100% compatible with charging money for some kind of service or for the convenience of a binary or something like that.

Software freedom is really about availability of the source code and your right to modify and distribute your modifications, not free as in beer freedom.

Commercializing it doesn’t have to mean bleeding customers dry, it can be something where most people are not paying a dime and are enjoying a fully open source experience. I think nginx plus is a good example of that sort of model. I have never met anyone who pays for nginx but there’s some big companies with big company problems that do.

Another example is Discourse forums. You can pay for support and hosting.

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