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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?

#171

Post by eru »

kevindamm wrote: post #161
bravesoul2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I almost believed that was a thing, but I don't see any indication that it is. Not a bad idea IMO

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 badly written, any decent company lawyer would strongly advice staying away from your code. And if that's the outcome you want: you might as well open source it with a 'non-commercial use only' license.

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

#172

Post by 65 »

This sounds bad but the only reason I open source my projects is because to publish on NPM as a free account I need my packages to be public, and therefore my packages need to not be horrible and have no documentation.

Otherwise I'd just keep my packages private.

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

#173

Post by ahaucnx »

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #165
ahaucnx wrote: post #159

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…

What's the regret then?

I hit sent too fast on this one and added the missing part.

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

#174

Post by eru »

dangus wrote: post #160
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 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.

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

#175

Post by Joel_Mckay »

dalemhurley wrote: post #89
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.

I remember back in the 90's when the internet was just beginning and script kiddies were constantly sending Back Orifice to people thinking they were "L33T" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice

If I recall BO was also a Trojan, and infected those with malice as well.

In general, the new ML sploit-bots can fuzz and inject faster than any person.

Meh, most issues are from the consumer architecture being deployed in industrial settings. Most modern Intel/AMD PC come with side-channel hardware RATs from the factory. =3

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

#176

Post by bravesoul2 »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #168
kevindamm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost believed that was a thing, but I don't see any indication that it is. Not a bad idea IMO

Hah. Well it is now...just copy & paste the GPL's text and append that one condition.

2 ... spend $1m on the law suit

3 ... profit!

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

#177

Post by Joel_Mckay »

collingreen wrote: post #108
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.

[flagged]

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

#178

Post by senderista »

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…

A project can't be monetized without getting wide adoption, and it can't get wide adoption without a permissive license that precludes monetization :(

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

#179

Post by EE84M3i »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #154
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 (…

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.

What does being "intense" on the safety side mean? High risk taking with AI safety or low?
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