logoalt Hacker News

ef2ktoday at 12:42 AM6 repliesview on HN

> I’m still trying to figure out what kinds of open source are worth writing in this new era

Is there any upside to opensourcing anything anymore? Anything published today becomes training data for the next model, with no attribution to the original work.

If the goal is to experiment, share ideas, or let others learn from the work, maybe the better default now is "source available", instead of FOSS in the classic sense. It gives people visibility while setting clearer boundaries on how the work can be used.

I learned most of what I know thanks to FOSS projects so I'm still on the fence on this.


Replies

llbbddtoday at 4:52 AM

I keep seeing this attitude and I don't really understand it at all; there's no upside to publishing open source work because it might be utilized by more people, is that correct?

Or is it the attribution? There are many many libraries I have used and continue to use and I don't know the author's internet handle or Christian name. Does that matter? Why?

I have written a lot of code that my name is no longer attached to. I don't care and I don't know why anyone does. If it were valuable I would have made more money off of it in the first place, and I don't have the ego to just care that people know it's my code either.

I want the things I do today to have an upside for people in the future. If that means I write code that gets incorporated into a model that people use to build things N number of years from now, that's great. That's awesome. Why the hell is that apparently so demotivating to some people?

show 2 replies
xgulfietoday at 12:50 AM

Sorry but source-available is probably going to get slurped up for training data as well

Microsoft already did this for all code in every public repo.

show 1 reply
theturtlemovestoday at 7:21 AM

You're not obligated to give away your mind for free. You're free to share, of course. But sharing implies reciprocity, a back and forth. The internet used to be like that, but if the environment changes, you adapt your behavior accordingly.

In the long run I think it's time to starve the system from input until it's attitude reverts to reciprocal. It's not what I'd want, but it seems necessary. People learn from consequences, not from words alone

show 1 reply
justarandomnametoday at 1:48 AM

This is kinda how I've felt for months. I don't have any interest in continuing existing open source projects and don't want to create any new ones.

What's the point?

All of my personal projects for the past few months have been entirely private, I don't even host them on Github anymore, I have a private Forgejo instance I use instead.

I also don't trust any new open source project I stumble upon anymore unless I know it was started at least a year ago.

1gn15today at 2:10 AM

Staying true to free software principles. It's unethical to publish nonfree code or binaries.

show 1 reply
zahlmantoday at 12:45 PM

> It gives people visibility while setting clearer boundaries on how the work can be used.

... Because those would be respected?