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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?

#291

Post by 9rx »

eru wrote: post #174
dangus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ope…

> The only way to escape wage slavery without being born wealthy is to be a business owner and have that business scale. People working in finance or (in the year 2025) as AI researchers with fantastic signing bonuses for switching to Meta might want to disagree.

People working in finance aren't in a good place to disagree. They haven't escaped wage slavery, even if they technically have the ability to. The funny thing about really high paying jobs is that people tend to get so wrapped up in them they forget to free themselves from it.

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

#292

Post by eru »

9rx wrote: post #291
eru wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way to escape wage slavery without being born wealthy is to be a business owner and have that business scale. People working in finance or (in the year 2025) as AI researchers with fantastic signing bonuses for switching to Meta might want to disagree.

People working in finance aren't in a good place to disagree. They haven't escaped wage slavery, even if they technically have the ability to. The funny thing about really high paying jobs is that people tend to get so wrapped up in them they forget to free themselves from it.

Now, I mean you can work in finance for a bit, and if you play your cards right, you can retire young.

Yes, you can argue that while you are working, you are a slave to the wage. Maybe.

But don't tell me that when you retire with tens of millions in your thirties (if you play your cards right!), you are a slave any more.

> [...] that people tend to get so wrapped up in them they forget to free themselves from it.

Eh, how is that different from going into business by yourself?

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

#293

Post by eru »

esseph wrote: post #188
eru wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be very, very hard to make this work in practice. What does it mean to offer a job? Can they offer a job that pays a dollar a year and call it a day? Or can you force them to offer you a job that pays a billion dollars a year? Can they offer you a job, but only in Antarctica? What about visa sponsorship? Of course, you can write whatever ill conceived terms you want in your license. But if your license is ba…

Worse things have been tried. That actually doesn't sound so bad. (Designing the job requirements!)

> That actually doesn't sound so bad. (Designing the job requirements!)

Well, it's similar to having a license that allows the author to decide on the price of the product after the other side has decided to buy it. There just won't be any buyers.

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

#294

Post by 9rx »

eru wrote: post #292
9rx wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People working in finance aren't in a good place to disagree. They haven't escaped wage slavery, even if they technically have the ability to. The funny thing about really high paying jobs is that people tend to get so wrapped up in them they forget to free themselves from it.

Now, I mean you can work in finance for a bit, and if you play your cards right, you can retire young. Yes, you can argue that while you are working, you are a slave to the wage. Maybe. But don't tell me that when you retire with tens of millions in your thirties (if you play your cards right!), you are a slave any more. > [...] that people tend to get so wrapped up in them they forget to free themselves from it. Eh,…

> Eh, how is that different from going into business by yourself?

Pedantically, there is unlikely to be a wage. But even if we use the term loosely, the type of scalable business described usually do not make any money until it is sold, so you are effectively forced out as soon as it is possible.

A highly paid wage slave may technically be able to leave just as quickly, but in practice the golden handcuffs are often very strong. It is telling that the phrase used was "People working in finance" rather than "People who briefly worked in finance".

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

#295

Post by skinnymuch »

ozim wrote: post #242
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…

I get pretty angry by those type of people. „Open source and free*” asterisk for „until I get traction or VC money”. That’s bait and switch and riding on community good will.

Society is bait and switch. You have to pay for rent and food/necessities or you’ll die/rot on the street while every politically illiterate person and the structures and institutions of society exclaim how amazing and freedom loving liberal democracy and capitalism is

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

#296

Post by ivanstepanovftw »

My worst experience is to submit two decent PR that was ignored by maintainers. I had burden to support them for a month, solving merge conflicts, solving new bugs in the main branch that were merged without testing, and to adapt test system to prove my changes are solving something.

And then I saw that maintainer not just ignores but closes every else PR with these words:

> your contributions are too undisciplined and difficult to review. please just make sure there are issues filed for the problems and let a core team member or other contributor solve it. [1]

I have directly asked maintainers to merge at least one PR [2], because I see someone is in the middle of refactoring whole backend, but got ignored.

I have rage closed all my contributions and made most of my projects private. I think I will never go open ever again.

[1]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/21426#issuecomment-30823...

[2]: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/pull/24317

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

#297

Post by skinnymuch »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #244
crazygringo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Ok, but corporations also lie to and defraud their employees all the time. In ways large and small. That's 100% true, and lamentable. But two wrongs don't make a right. And while one can't control the company's behavior, a person can control their own behavior. As such, it is perfectly reasonable to criticize them when they choose to act without integrity.

Actually going along with the BS Of corpos is the bigger and biggest wrong alongside what the corpos do. Not all of us view integrity the same way. Not at all.

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

#298

Post by [deleted] »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #215
arjvik wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (…

Don’t be naive, these companies don’t care about talent they care about prestige and credentials. @ standford will always beat “did actual work relevant to the project”. Just look at the background of some of the names in this at these places. As always it’s “who you know and where you’ve been” not “what you know and what you’ve built” edit: You can downvote if you like, but it doesn’t change the fact that high stake…

[deleted]

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

#299

Post by eru »

9rx wrote: post #294
eru wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, I mean you can work in finance for a bit, and if you play your cards right, you can retire young. Yes, you can argue that while you are working, you are a slave to the wage. Maybe. But don't tell me that when you retire with tens of millions in your thirties (if you play your cards right!), you are a slave any more. > [...] that people tend to get so wrapped up in them they forget to free themselves from it. Eh,…

> Eh, how is that different from going into business by yourself? Pedantically, there is unlikely to be a wage. But even if we use the term loosely, the type of scalable business described usually do not make any money until it is sold, so you are effectively forced out as soon as it is possible. A highly paid wage slave may technically be able to leave just as quickly, but in practice the golden handcuffs are often…

As opposed to 'people who briefly ran their own business'?

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

#300

Post by stn_za »

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,…

Sigh, good old days
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