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All my new code will be closed-source from now on

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Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#41

Post by coldpie »

Ekaros wrote: post #30
coldpie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to fund it from selling a product. Well, no. Most people in the world get paid for doing a thing. I pay someone $X and they do Y for me and then I have the Y that I wanted done. This can work for software too. Someone pays me to develop software that does something useful for them, and then they have the thing they wanted. For example if Wine is missing a feature someone can pay me to implement it, and the…

Money must come from somewhere. And by selling a product I mean a phone. Or box doing something. With Wine, well Valve sells games and want those games to run on something else than platform they were build for. In the end product is being sold originally to fund that development. Software can also be pure product enabling company to do something or consumer to do something. But in that case open-source is likely inc…

In your first comment you said, "why would I pay for [software] if it is provided for free?" And you're right, you don't. What you pay for is for someone to develop software/features that don't exist yet. Maybe the users of the phone you sell want some new feature. Then it's done and everyone's happy and even better you don't need to pay for the entire project to be built from scratch or pay ongoing license fees or whatever. That's how you monetize open source.

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#42

Post by reactordev »

conartist6 wrote: post #21

I'm writing OSS code with the intent to replace git. I know my position is very different, but to me openness is not a critical vulnerability when facing big companies but my secret weapon. For me the best outcome is taking over all the market currently held by git and GitHub, and the worst outcome would be that Microsoft somehow pulls an embrace-extend-extinguish on us. But my goal, and I think I've been successful…

Curious your thoughts on how we got here, with git being the dominant VCS. You do know how git rose to fame? Who wrote it? Why it was adopted?

It came from a need.

So what needs do we have that you solve?

I agree GitHub is evil. There’s GitLab, gitea, codeberg… self hosting, ssh like its old school git, you have other options.

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#43

Post by init1 »

conartist6 wrote: post #21

I'm writing OSS code with the intent to replace git. I know my position is very different, but to me openness is not a critical vulnerability when facing big companies but my secret weapon. For me the best outcome is taking over all the market currently held by git and GitHub, and the worst outcome would be that Microsoft somehow pulls an embrace-extend-extinguish on us. But my goal, and I think I've been successful…

Git is an OSS project and is not owned even slightly by Microsoft.

Github the website however is.

You don't need to replace git.

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#44

Post by throwaway150 »

jampekka wrote: post #25
moltar wrote: post #3

This is a foreign position to me. I open sourced my code not to make money but because I saw that others can benefit from it. I never made money from open source. If I did my mental model would be that these are charitable donations, not an income stream I can rely on.

The post mentions this: > Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That's not a system, that's charity. I'm all for non-monetary motives, but the reality is that most people have to work for a living, leaving quite limited time/energy for volunteering. The scale of OSS that we have today would not (perhaps sadly) be possible without OSS development paying the bills.

> Some OSS will keep going - wealthy devs doing it for fun or education. That's not a system, that's charity.

I read that. That statement is technically true but I don't like that they put a negative connotation around it. Apologies if they didn't intend it like that.

But I'll say that there is nothing wrong with charity. Some devs will do open source with hope to monetize. Some will do it for charity. Both are equally valid motivations.

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#45

Post by csomar »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #40

Tailwind is down because it solved the same problem that AI does - CSS is super complex, write only code and largely not memorable. AI is perfect for writing CSS because you can tell it your intent and it does it. There just is not the need for frameworks/libs to make it less complex.

I have just written an article about this (submitted by someone else: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46565409)

What you are saying is wrong and countered with hard data: LLMs produce and increase the use of tailwind not decrease it. Confirmed by the founder himself.

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#46

Post by ptero »

sallveburrpi wrote: post #22
mellosouls wrote: post #4

The entire argument is framed through an anti-open-source view which sees participation as entirely motivated by money. It's an unfortunate presentation that makes it more difficult to sympathise with - and ultimately it may not matter; either somebody else will fill the gap or the LLMs he resents will help coders create their products without the libraries he seems to think are valueless without a set financial cost…

> which sees participation as entirely motivated by money. I think it’s rather that people need to eat. He admits that some wealthy devs will continue to work for free (do charity basically) but for those who want to make a living from OSS it will be harder and harder. But yea as you said ultimately it probably won’t matter that much.

> I think it’s rather that people need to eat.

They do and always did. But open source was originally not about that, but about building something cool and letting others build on that. And, crucially, about GPL preventing large companies from extinguishing your work "because copyright". I remember Bill Gates calling GPL a spreading virus that tech world has to fight.

Sometime along this path monetizing open source became a thing. Now it is apparently becoming less lucrative. OK. That's the nature of changes, but IMO it does not kill open source. It might eventually make it even better, as commercial open source has become too widespread and money corrupts. My 2c.

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#47

Post by steve1977 »

s1mplicissimus wrote: post #38
conartist6 wrote: post #21

I'm writing OSS code with the intent to replace git. I know my position is very different, but to me openness is not a critical vulnerability when facing big companies but my secret weapon. For me the best outcome is taking over all the market currently held by git and GitHub, and the worst outcome would be that Microsoft somehow pulls an embrace-extend-extinguish on us. But my goal, and I think I've been successful…

I agree githubs dominant position is an issue very much worth gnawing at. What's wrong with git though?

And how would OP differentiate from example Forgejo?

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#48

Post by tvbusy »

mellosouls wrote: post #4

The entire argument is framed through an anti-open-source view which sees participation as entirely motivated by money. It's an unfortunate presentation that makes it more difficult to sympathise with - and ultimately it may not matter; either somebody else will fill the gap or the LLMs he resents will help coders create their products without the libraries he seems to think are valueless without a set financial cost…

You're thinking of open source projects that only need a few hours of work per week. Anything more than a few hours a week either requires someone to give up their full time job to work on it (switch to part time jobs/consultation is an option), or having multiple contributors which still require significant effort to coordinate at the end of the day.

Let's say Tailwind CSS gives up and stops the project, do you think there'll be someone else picking it up, knowing how Tailwind failed in the first place? LLMs don't create new things, they remix what are already available. It's delusional to think that you should use LLMs to create a whole UI library just for your application and spend enormous effort not only maintaining it but also train new team members to use it down the road.

Open source is charity, it's unreasonable, even entitled, to demand someone work on it full time without pay.

Re: All my new code will be closed-source from now on

#50

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

conartist6 wrote: post #21

I'm writing OSS code with the intent to replace git. I know my position is very different, but to me openness is not a critical vulnerability when facing big companies but my secret weapon. For me the best outcome is taking over all the market currently held by git and GitHub, and the worst outcome would be that Microsoft somehow pulls an embrace-extend-extinguish on us. But my goal, and I think I've been successful…

Microsoft could probably look to run things like GitHub at a loss, picking up equity via their integrations and leveraging any data customers publish on GitHub to ingest into their own AI or sell to others.
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