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Ask HN: Have you regretted making something open-source?

352 points by haydenlee 9y ago

marenkay 9y ago
Definitely: the software for running World of Warcraft private servers, also known as MaNGOS. Founded and released that in 2005, got so much trouble because of that and wasted loads of cash to keep up project through numerous DDoS attacks, hacks (one of them even causing github downtime in 2013). oh well. Next :-)
- tokenizerrr 9y ago
  But did you regret making it open source, or doing it at all? Wouldn't most of those issues have still occurred had you kept the source closed, but ran such a server?
  - marenkay 9y ago
    Definitely the open source part, as most of the issues were results of open sourcing it. This comes down to two parts being problematic: - we took away business from private servers as there was now an open source solution - applying the open source community model on the private server scene was a disaster. It was to idealistic. In hindsight, the open source part was basically painting a target on us. As an example: private servers running mostly use MaNGOS (there is not much else to use) and pretend to have built their own software and advertise by bashing MaNGOS.
    - tokenizerrr 9y ago
      Interesting! Could you give some more examples?
      - marenkay 9y ago
        Of course. Remember that huge buzz about how Blizzard should offer servers running older expansions that was headed by a private server named Nostalrius? Well, those guys used MaNGOS source code with just a few bug fixes, and snatched an invite to Blizzard: http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44218 http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44218 In the end, the sources went public and it appears they were using a five year old MaNGOS codebase and not the famed "own codebase". A repeating pattern ever since 2005.
        Omniusaspirer 9y ago
        While they certainly did use Mangos, it is worth pointing out for the less informed that they did a lot more than "a few bugfixes". If you compare the current Elysium core (taken from Nostalrius and opensourced) and the stock MaNGOS that existed at the time of Nostalrius launch there's absolutely no comparison- let alone if you compared 2005 MaNGOS as released by marenkay and what we have today after over 10 years of open source development from thousands of contributors. All of that said, myself and millions of others who have enjoyed classic servers over the years have you to thank for laying the foundation,and I agree with the other (downvoted) poster who says it saddens him a bit to see you regret something which has brought so much happiness to the world. If you ignore the selfish server administrators and look at the comments from some of the better parts of the community you'll quickly see that you've helped a lot of people cope with various ills in their lives, and many people have outright told me that they felt classic servers had helped them stave off depression or even suicide.
        marenkay 9y ago
        The comparison does not work because Nostalrius/Elysium actually uses a codebase from the around 2010. If you go back to old MaNGOS sources and do the diff on that old state you can see it is just a few bug fixes. It looks like Nostalrius and Elysium developers simply did not figure out that after that MaNGOS was split into distinct projects for each of WoWs expansions and decided to stay with pre-split version. /facepalm
    - zanny 9y ago
      And that is a situation where license alone wouldn't have helped, since even if you went and threw it under the AGPL most of the private servers operate outside US copyright jurisdiction so they can advertise themselves as private WoW servers in the first place. The community itself bashes a ton on private servers for taking GPL code, adding a bunch to it, and then never releasing changes even after they go under. It probably relates back to the general disinterest / apathy / ignorance of software freedom in gaming / hobbyist scenes in general, though. If you have never written a line of code in your life you probably have no idea how the world operates in regards to licensing. You don't distinguish VLC from Windows Media Player besides the visuals you see in front of you.
- sturmen 9y ago
  I had no idea it was so taxing, but I do want to let you know that MaNGOS is probably what set me on a path of learning programming (which has become my career) so I am indebted to you.
  - marenkay 9y ago
    Always nice to hear it had some of the intended effects. The - albeit ideal - project goal always was to inspire people to learn development and engage with more complex issues.
- mrkrabo 9y ago
  Thanks to mangos I've played for years for free. I've made dozens of friends along the way. It's been a big part of my life and I'm very happy about it. Your project has made me and thousands of people very happy. So don't talk such rot.
  - __s 9y ago
    This is about him, not you. He means you no ill will; only that the project was a burden to him, & he didn't receive much compensation besides the entitled thanks from such illustrious folk as Mr Krabo
    - mrkrabo 9y ago
      I don't know man. It bothers me that he feels like that about his project. Making people happy always means making some sacrifice.
    - marenkay 9y ago
      Probably is the whole point: there has not been many thankful moments, it was usually demands for more stuff being given away for free.
- ghthor 9y ago
  Thanks for all your hard work! Also you're a badass and those WoW private servers have been loads of fun for me and my friends!
fdik 9y ago
Never.
mherrmann 9y ago
Not me and not OS but Pieter Levels said he regretted offering an API for Nomad List [1]. [1]: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/861259743603470336 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/861259743603470336
- knocte 9y ago
  That's not opensourcing something, but giving a service for free.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
_wmd 9y ago
Throwing random code over the wall is fairly harmless, until it sees any level of popularity, at which point you become the sole point of contact for a sea of people expecting bug fixes for free. That can be rewarding, but it can also be intensely draining. Imagine looking at your personal inbox giving you the same feeling of dread as you'd expect looking at your work inbox after being off for a few weeks.. I'm currently trying to offload one project because it's getting too much, and just finding a new maintainer who knows C and Python to a decent standard has turned out difficult. None of the regular project users have stepped up. Shrugs
- shp0ngle 9y ago
  Yeah, this is my experience as well Before open sourcing, I have that anxiety that people will look at my shitty code and judge. Nobody really looks at the code in reality. People just come, write some terribly written bug report, and then they write "+1" in github issues.
  - yev 9y ago
    It is 100% same in my case..
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    Until your code gets linked on HN or Reddit where people will then read the code and then proclaim that the person who created it must be dumb because of all of the obvious mistakes they made (generally ignoring the reasons for some of those choices as bad reasons). That's what is pushing me away from releasing code to the public. It's really crushing to my self worth as a developer to feel good about a project only to be told how awful it is and how it's broken by design.
    - zzzcpan 9y ago
      Why would you care what others think about your code? Nobody knows anything in this industry. There is so little important criticism, that even finding it if you really want to is super hard.
repomies6999 9y ago
While I don't regret it, last experiences with open source probably made me to not do it again. Essentially people seemed to assume that if I release a project, it also means that I'm require to provide free support for it, etc. The attitude from users of the software was depressing - in fact to me it feels that my paying customers are nicer on average.
- rhlala 9y ago
  Pretty sad comment.. I though the vast majority of open-source users were devs...
  - butterfi 9y ago
    Dev's can be jerks too.
  - shimo5037 9y ago
    At first most of your users tend to be fairly advanced. After all, they've even managed to somehow find the obscure thing you've made. This is the most rewarding time for an open source project as many of the issues are real and the quality of bug reports and feedback is extremely high. Over time, as the project gains popularity, many of these issues will either have been solved, or have become easily googlable. Therefore you'll rarely hear from the advanced, intelligent portion of your users, although it's also certainly possible that they've already moved on to shinier things. In the end, you tend to have a noticeable, vocal portion of users whom I'd generously call "social developers," who are bad at figuring things out by themselves and/or prefer asking things from another person to save a few minutes of their own time. Many of these users are very draining to deal with.
  - xioxox 9y ago
    It depends on the project. Most of the people using my GUI plotting software Veusz [1] are not devs. Therefore I get a lot of questions on how to use it, bug reports, complaints and feature suggestions, but little in the way of code. [1] https://veusz.github.io/ https://veusz.github.io/
- 9y ago
num2499 9y ago
New car is coming Everything is safe.
num2499 9y ago
I'll make another virtual world
leeoniya 9y ago
i originally open-sourced some interesting algorithms built atop a lib i also open-sourced and realized later when building SaaS that it was unwise to have them open, so i force-pushed a commit that removed them from the repo after seeing that all public forks were out of date and did not have them yet. it helped that the lib never got popular so it was easy to do. there could still be some fork/clone somewhere that has them though :)
symisc_devel 9y ago
Not regretting it, but open sourcing our embedded PHP engine PH7[1] did hurt our sales (I think) when some Chinese company started abusing the software by embedding it in their hardware without paying any license fee (The software is dual licensed and require a commercial license for closed source code). I have a indirect proof of that abuse but starting a lawsuit against a Chinese co won't lead to any result? [1]: https://github.com/symisc/ph7 https://github.com/symisc/ph7
- cubano 9y ago
  Your project is super interesting to me as a recovering C programmer whom now makes a living with PHP...great job with the example as well. Even the links at the bottom of the readme are awesome.
- Sholmesy 9y ago
  Just wanted to say that project has a great readme.
- kerneldeveloper 9y ago
  In China, open source licenses don't have any legal effect, so it's hard to safeguard legal rights. In recent years some open source organizations have been founded and they hope their efforts can change the environment of open source in China. However, there is still a long way to go.
  - sgroppino 9y ago
    Maybe a solution is to add some lines of code with special keywords to get your project blocked by the great firewall?
    - edko 9y ago
      Do you know of any project that successfully does this?
      - 9y ago
erikb 9y ago
The opposite. In my country it's really hard to get any ownership of your content if you are an employee. For instance you work as secretary for a bodyguard company and in your private time lead a pop-rock band. It's not impossible that your boss can grab a share of your music earnings. In this regard open-source is really helpful, because it enables me to write code in one gig that is good enough to earn my pay there, but allows me in a legal way to use the same code in my next gig. Instead of giving my boss monopoly over my long-term viable content, I make it free to everybody and therefore useful to my future self. I would even argue it's good for the boss too, since this way I am more motivated to produce, and 90% of the code used in production is totally useless once the author is gone, since most developers aren't good enough to reuse preexisting code and will instead start writing their own code from scratch.
- sverige 9y ago
  > For instance you work as secretary for a bodyguard company and in your private time lead a pop-rock band. It's not impossible that your boss can grab a share of your music earnings. What country is this? I can't imagine such a scenario outside of a serfdom.
  - debaserab2 9y ago
    Happens all the time in employment contracts written in the United States. Not that they are necessarily enforceable, but it doesn't stop employers from trying.
    - sverige 9y ago
      I've seen the really broad contracts where basically anything you do while employed by them is theirs, but OP said that it would not be out of the question that the boss could get a cut of the earnings from music. Is there any place in the U.S. where a judge would enforce such a contract to that degree?
  - adekok 9y ago
    In the US, it's possible for your employer to own your ideas: http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/ http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/ Follow-up: https://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown https://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown Solution: never disclose anything to your employer unless absolutely required. If you have a new idea, keep it quiet until you quit your job. FTA: (After 5 1/2 years of litigation, Judge Curt B. Henderson of Collin County, Texas' 219th District Court ruled in favor of Alcatel, and Brown was obliged to fully disclose the idea to Alcatel and only Alcatel, and to repay in full Alcatel's legal fees of more than $330,000, which according to Brown forced him to sell his house and other assets. During the court case, Brown argued that since his idea had never been committed to paper or physically manifested in any way, there were no grounds for the company to claim ownership of his very thoughts, and he drew comparisons to the fact that an invention cannot be copyrighted or patented until it is transferred from an idea onto paper. He didn't handle his case well, which torpedoed it. But in parts of the US, yes... anything you do during the course of your employment is owned by the employer. As a contractor, I've been asked to sign contracts with similar clauses. Uh... no. I have other customers, and you don't own what they pay me to do. Their typical counter is "But this is a standard clause". Telling them to "no contract" is usually the only option. They just can't understand why an entirely one-sided contract isn't good for me.
mholt 9y ago
I think I regret making Papa Parse[1] open source under the MIT license, anyway. Turns out it became incredibly popular and I missed a lot of opportunities to make a profit on the side. But it is used by government agencies around the world, and non-profit organizations like the UN and Wikimedia, so at least it's doing some good. But I know quite a few large businesses are using it at the core of their products... for free. Oh well. It was fun to build. [1] http://papaparse.com http://papaparse.com
- sverige 9y ago
  I'm a huge fan of the two-clause BSD license, but I can also understand that regret. I've always wondered how you would monetize something like this, though. It always seems difficult to me how you ensure that you're being paid without an army of lawyers (the Microsoft model) or limiting it to some sort of app store (the Apple / Google model). What would be the best way to do it, if you had it to do over again?
  - mholt 9y ago
    Given that it's client-side JS, I'd probably just use an honor system. I'm not really a licensing law guy, but: Give it a license that businesses would not like to use (GPL?), then sell proprietary licenses to waive some of the requirements of GPL.
    - X86BSD 9y ago
      But again he or she above you doesn't really want to enforce that. Enforcement of the GPL is a big problem. Who has the time and energy and money to sit around looking for violators? And then if you do find them you have to lawyer up and that costs a lot of money. You dont have any time or money to write code. The reality is you either accept people are going to use the code you OS and just let that code go (BSDL) or you keep it closed source. I like the idea I just posted above of a model of releasing the core code but letting actual users vote for and fund what bugs and new features get added to the free core code.
LeicaLatte 9y ago
Yes
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
88e282102ae2e5b 9y ago
I'm glad I did it, but it was definitely more work than I was expecting.
calpaterson 9y ago
One pattern I have seen a few times is that a company develops some important internal piece of software and then later the opens the source code (normally motivated by the notion that other people will contribute to it - which they rarely do). What normally happens next that the company loses control of this software which they probably didn't realise was so important to their core business as the employees who worked on it are empowered move to other companies and develop private forks or start up as a micro-ISV/contractor business based around providing private forks of the software to clients. I think what people don't realise is that most of the legal structure around open source software is for software used by end-users. For internal software the GPL doesn't function in the same way: other organisations are more than able to keep private forks and realise all the benefit of the software without contributing back.
neilk 9y ago
I'm encountering difficulties right now with a project I open-sourced. Some other people made it a core part of their business, but then I left the company, so I can't merge patches to the official branch. And to be honest I don't have the time to do this (I work for another growing startup). But it's still it's one of the best things I have ever done in computing. It was fun, and I got paid to do a kind of pure research, and enhance my own reputation while doing it. My former employer got free patches from very big and talented companies. I've made some interesting connections through this, that's for sure.
sheetjs 9y ago
We build open source tools for processing spreadsheet data (https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx is our largest and most popular open source project). Our open source tools have been used by government agencies, S&P 500/Dow companies, and startups alike. We've found people have taken the library, removed header comments, and sold as-is. Some startups have taken our web demo http://oss.sheetjs.com/ http://oss.sheetjs.com/, replaced the name with their own, and tried to use that to raise money. But those aren't really regrettable -- it's written off as "shameless people are shameless". The truth is, you can never really know what would have happened if you didn't open source in the first place. Would an open source alternative emerge? Would people pay for your project or would it die in relative obscurity? That's unknowable. If there's any regret, it's probably the amount of time spent doing support work for the open source libraries. It's not particularly interesting (usually pertaining to something in the README), time consuming (everyone seems to have their own secret project that they don't want to discuss, so you have to draw out the underlying issue slowly), and uncompensated.
- lobotryas 9y ago
  Just curious - did you take any action against those who violated your license or did you just let them be?
  - Redoubts 9y ago
    And how does one even find out about such violations?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - wolfteets 9y ago
      My company uses https://nerdydata.com https://nerdydata.com to find websites that use our javascript tag without a license. So far it's been working nicely for us
  - sheetjs 9y ago
byuu 9y ago
As a whole, I'm much more happy that I did than if I hadn't. Over the past 13 years, I've been developing console emulators for 12 systems and counting. If my work were closed source, I would not have received patches and contributions from 30+ people and counting. And I wouldn't have met several amazing people who ended up becoming very good friends for a very long time. One in particular has been amazing in helping me open up and be less guarded all the time. I was also able to sell one complete commercial license, and received a partial payment for a license from another company that then vanished (I tried to refund the latter, but e-mails to them no longer work.) I've received a very large number of donations over the years. Should be around $5000 in license sales, $7500 in donations, and another $2500 to fundraise hiring a person to decap chips and extract program code from them for improving emulation. I've also had multiple people make very specialized custom hardware that has helped me out more than words can express. I've had people trust me and lend me thousands of dollars worth of rare games for the purpose of verifying information for emulation and then returning them. But I would be lying if I said it was all good. At the time of writing, I am aware of eighteen forks of my emulator. Two of these projects in particular never talk to me or submit upstream fixes, and instead commit changes to their own repository with extremely derogatory remarks about me and my programming skills. Two of these intentionally undermine and sabotage the entire goal of what I've been working on from day one (namely, adding known-incorrect hacks to speed up emulation. My distaste for hacks was the whole reason I got involved with emulation in the first place.) Most of the forks of my software are from versions I released either three and a half years ago, or six years ago. A small number of them are quite popular, meaning my work may as well have been discontinued for those users. One fork collects over $2,000 a month on Patreon off the backs of others' emulator cores including mine -- even ones that are explicitly non-commercial. One developer just wantonly ignored my GPL license and sells my emulator on Steam, doesn't provide any attribution or credit for using my work, and plays games when people try and get the source code to said work (but to be fair, one person did obtain it.) That one was made particularly worse because he wasted a good 20+ hours of my time over the span of six months promising repeatedly to license my emulator, only to back away at the last minute and pull this without even telling me. I've had people very blatantly read through my source code to improve their emulators and documentation, and not just avoid giving me credit, but outright deny having ever looked at my code. In the most egregious case, someone copied a set of opcode mnemonics from a CPU core. Only ... that CPU core was never publicly documented: I made up every single mnemonic myself, and the only place those mnemonics existed were in my source code. I've ended up with two people who have harassed and impersonated me online for six and eleven years respectively now, for reasons I really can't comprehend. I've had half the main staff of the most popular emulator out there make a passtime of digging through my 400K-line codebase, looking for individual lines that were poorly written to mock completely out of context in a public chat area -- and they're people I still have to work with often. But what I always remind myself is, it's easier to dwell on the negatives. It's possible I could have made a lot more money with commercial licensing sales if my work were closed source. But my software is vastly better than it would be without all the help I've received over the years due to being open source. And I benefited a lot from other open source emulators, so it would be pretty selfish to not return the favor to others. There's no sense in me trying to force people to use my version of my software. I'd rather have a smaller number of users who actually fully appreciate what I'm going for. And I have a pretty thick skin at this point for the rest of it. That said, do put as much thought as you can into this before releasing as open source. Once you do so, you can never go back. Even if you try, your work will be forked at the last open source release. But speaking for myself, if I could go back and do it all again, I would still keep everything open source.
prodicus 9y ago
Nooo. Open source was always something I really believed in. I don't have projects which are used by the masses, but the random thanks by a stranger when he finds something I made and open sourced[1] as useful is priceless. But that's just me. [1]: https://github.com/tasdikrahman/ https://github.com/tasdikrahman/
christocracy 9y ago
I made an open source lib for Cordova (eventually ported to React Native and others). I found I'd gained a number of users with few contributing back, so I forked my own project, closed the source into compiled and encrypted binaries. Now I sell licenses and support, generating ~$20k/month. Innovation has skyrocketed since I've been able to dedicate 100% of my time to the products for the last 2.5 years.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  How do you think it would have been if you stayed with the open project, and just sold support?
  - christocracy 9y ago
    Well, what I tell customers is "what you're paying for is support and latest updates. Customers get access to a private repo for latest updates and priority support for 1 year (yearly maintenance fee = $150/year). ~20% of customers pay the yearly. Each purchased key is bound to a mobile app id. If customer wants to make 3 apps, they need to purchase 3 keys. Public repo contains latest stable release; purchased keys unlock product in public repo forever. iOS lib is free. Only Android lib requires a key to unlock it. This gives users the chance to freely develop iOS first (and hopefully get hooked, like cheap crack ;). Chances are they're going to release an Android version too since most of the earth uses Android. The Android version is fully operational in DEBUG builds. Key is enforced for RELEASE builds.
- nqzero 9y ago
  can you imagine a not-quite-open-source license that would give you the best of both worlds ?
  - christocracy 9y ago
    The model I have seems to work. I don't have any pressure to change anything.
CJefferson 9y ago
I have regretted using the GPL, twice. First time I made a project I wrote myself (a CP solver called Minion) GPL. I now know several companies had interest in it but we're afraid to put any GPL in their toolchain. I've never received useful external contributions, so I may as well have used BSD. The second is a project I work on where GPL V2 was chosen. Now some committers have passed away so we are stuck on 2, so can't link with other, GPL v3-only code
- nfriedly 9y ago
  I've had a couple of cases where companies pay me $5-10k for an commercial license of something I released free under GPL or AGPL - its rare, but it does happen. You can add a note along the lines of "commercial license available, contact me for details" in the readme. I do require that contributors assign copyright to me before I'll merge their PRs.
  - dopeboy 9y ago
    What kind of software did you write that generated interest in a commercial license?
    - nfriedly 9y ago
      This guy: https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker It's a web proxy that can be used as a lib to tweak web pages on the way through.
- mcguire 9y ago
  You didn't use the "GPLv2 or later" clause?
  - pm215 9y ago
    The Linux kernel is the most well known codebase that is specifically GPL-2-only. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other 2-only codebases made by people familiar with kernel development, either because they were influenced by the kernel's choice or because they wanted to be able to use code from the kernel. QEMU is in the latter boat -- we have code that was copied from the kernel, so effectively we're GPL-2-only despite having a fair amount of 2-or-later or BSD or other licensed source too. This is awkward because we'd really like to be able to use the binutils disassemblers, but we're stuck on the versions from the last GPL-2 binutils release...
KirinDave 9y ago
Yes. I did horrible things at the start of clj-time in my fork. I was so disgusted with my solution I abandoned it. Those decisions got propagated and didn't get fixed for a long time. I should have kept it closed and let someone else do it properly, rather than unless abandonware on the world. In fact, come to think of it, I regret everything I've ever open sourced. I can't think of even one time it lead to a positive outcome. I can't think of even one time it didn't lead to a decidedly negative outcome. The same is true of my writing. Every time I've wrote about the advancements of programming, people have made it their goal to oppose it and mock me over it. Lots of people love to talk about how great this community is. But I've never seen our world as much more than a slowly spreading cloud of venom in a larger medium of confusion. I've felt this way ever since the days when I was a kid and the title "hacker" was rigorously gatekept in local and isolated oligarchies.
- nvivo 9y ago
  That was very pessimistic, but I can see some truth in it.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    I don't understand why you'd find it "pessimistic." Would it be more "optimistic" to ignore all the bad things this community has done with and to me? That's not a thing I'm capable of doing. I do the work because I love it. The community hasn't welcomed me in any non-barbed way since the early 90s.
shmerl 9y ago
Any particular reason you'd expect someone to regret it?
suretec 9y ago
Not yet. Things we sponsor we always open source. They've always gone further than we ever hoped.
tyingq 9y ago
One use case that's often regrettable is software targeted at non-tech people. I made a free plug in for a shopping cart platform. Lots of happy users, but the occasional person ranting about how it doesn't work for them, and is expecting free troubleshooting and bug fixes on their schedule. A couple spinning into insults and swearing when the answer is "sorry, but I'm unable to help, maybe try a similar plugin from someone else".
- 20years 9y ago
  I had a similar experience when I released an open source real estate search plugin for Wordpress years ago. It gained traction and was covered by a few very prominent real estate blogs/news sites which resulted in over 10,000 downloads in 2 weeks. There were some people who were not able to get it to work with their theme, shared hosting environment, other plugin conflicts, etc. and expected me to install/troubleshoot. I was spending almost my entire day trying to help people and I couldn't handle the demand especially with that many downloads in such a short period of time. So I decided to put up paid support versions ranging from $50 to $150. People flipped out when I did that and literally attacked me in comment threads. I tried explaining the time commitment this entailed and that it was taking me away from my core business but the mob didn't care. They were mad that I wasn't willing to install or troubleshoot their environment for free. I ended up taking the plugin down and since then (it's been 7 years) I haven't open sourced anything major and will probably never release a Wordpress plugin to the public again. In hindsight, I probably could have made decent money from that plugin if I charged for it initially. It probably would not have gained as much traction or popularity but I think the outcome would have been very different.
_Marak_ 9y ago
I released an open-source universal cryptocurrency banking website in 2013 called "Safewallet". It has decent google ranking for SEO terms related to open-source crypto banking. Every time the price of Bitcoin goes up I start getting emails from wantrepreneurs asking me to essentially work for them without pay because they "have a great idea" and "just need a little help getting the software working". During Bitcoin mania phases ( like now ) I'll get 2-3 of these emails a month. Too many stories to list. Everything ranging from offers of $2,000 to build a "BitStamp clone" or the time I was suppose to be having a sales call with the CEO and instead was greeted by their lead engineer with an endless list of questions on how they could build their own cryptocurrency bank. CEO got real nasty when I politely informed him they would have to pay me for my expert advice. They all want something for nothing and get an attitude when I tell them I'm not going to build them their own cryptocurrency bank for free or for minimal pay. Regret spending so much time on something which has only brought me grief. see: https://github.com/bigcompany/safewallet https://github.com/bigcompany/safewallet
- nfriedly 9y ago
  You could consider puttng something next to your contact info along the lines of "I offer consulting services for $X,XXX per day" or whatever. I've had good experience with putting that kind of offer on open source projects in the past - fewer emails, more respect, and occasionally a few $.
- sumedh 9y ago
  There is something wrong with your domain or someone is trying to mess with you. I see this when I opened the site safewallet.org Please update your contact information
  - _Marak_ 9y ago
    I gave up on the project and let the domain lapse. Turns out I'm not very interested in running a bank.
- GordonS 9y ago
  Looks like ICANN have suspended safewallet.org for not having valid whois contact info?
Johnny_Brahms 9y ago
I have regretted my choice of licences, so now I only go copyleft. That has allowed me to monetize some small libraries with a pretty specific use case. Some companies wont use code they haven't got an invoice for.
geekodour 9y ago
I made a static blog generator based on github (https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog) I thought people will like it, It seems I wasted about 1month making that in my free time. I even wrote a funny blogpost about it in a blog generated by that generator ( https://geekodour.github.io/posts/dont-waste-your-time-making-your-own-open-source-project https://geekodour.github.io/posts/dont-waste-your-time-makin... )
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Are you sad because your open-source project didn't get traction? That happens all the time with most people, I guess. Someday it may attract some people, but it is not a "fair" game. Chance matters a lot. I have at least 10 libraries on GitHub that I think should have gained some visibility, but didn't. There are thousands of similar cases. I suggest that you keep the idea machine on and keep building stuff.
  - zzzcpan 9y ago
    Visibility is the easiest part, when you need it - just advertise and do PR, no reason to rely on a pure chance. Open source projects are often accepted by a lot of places, that do not allow ads for commercial products and services. But then you are going to have the same problem as others pointed out - doing free work. So unless you find a way to make your work on this project sustainable there is little point in gaining visibility.
    - fiatjaf 9y ago
      You can only say that after you've had visibility.
  - geekodour 9y ago
    Thankyou very much for your advice :) I'll keep on making things.
arca_vorago 9y ago
I think the difference between Foss and "open source" should be noted in questions like this. Open source != foss
stutsmansoft 9y ago
I made a Delphi component once. It was immediately modified in ways I disagreed with, renamed, and spread by someone else. The person who did this didn’t even have a conversation with me about it before doing so. This was before GitHub and forking and such, but it made me feel angry and unappreciated. The code that went around was almost entirely my work. I’m still bitter 25 years later and I’ve never contributed to Open Sores again.
- 43224gg252 9y ago
  It always seems to be the older generation that has this crappy immature attitude. I'm glad I have to work with less and less people like you.
  - sumedh 9y ago
    > crappy immature attitude. Wow the guy the released his code for free which was used by others without giving him any credits and he is the one with crappy immature attitude.
  - dang 9y ago
    This is a bannable offense on HN and we've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
devdad 9y ago
As a business owner, it's much easier for me to have an invoice (for the books) than explaining why I sent money through PayPal. Nothing is impossible, but it's more of a hassle for me to donate. We recently started to go through our commercial projects in a structured way and setup a small budget for OSS donations / support. Please setup some easy way to just give a receipt for support or anything else I can document. Purchase via CC is okay but I need receipts. :) Thanks to all creators in here that let's me keep a much higher development pace.
Steeeve 9y ago
I regret not making a good deal of software open source. But it's a tough decision depending on your market. One of the niches I specialized in was essentially taken over by an influx of offshore resources. It's like going into bizzaro world when you go to a meeting on a project and someone else is using your own powerpoint presentation and is doing it wrong. It's offensive when you go through project documentation and see that someone else has gotten paid for documents that you wrote for another customer - especially when they are not current. When I began experiencing this kind of thing, I felt confident in my decision _not_ to open source software. But the reality is that my biggest source of pride was given to the world at large. And all these years later I would appreciate having a lot of code which I no longer own in my portfolio. And while there are those who would have poached and pillaged my work, my income would have been minimally affected (or maybe not at all). The fact is that when I operated in that niche, the money I earned was all due to the fact that I was good, not because of any particular piece of software. Having a public portfolio of related software might have even brought in more business.
bane 9y ago
I can't get into details, but I worked at a place that was thinking about opening up some development for open source publishing. Another team was working on some very high-end algorithmic work in a specialized field and the company was pumping lots of money into internal R&D for that group. They were selected as an open source test case. They pushed up their code to github and within a few months a group of them had left the company to form a boot-strapped competitor using their same code -- essentially using the open source publication of their tools as a way to legally ex-filtrate corporate IP -- a nightmare scenario for many companies (and also recently in the news i.e. Uber v Waymo). This one act burned all open source publishing plans to the ground and now that company open sources as little software as possible. Now, several years later, they haven't published a single line of open source code that I'm aware of.
- cannam 9y ago
  One reason why a GPL licence can be a good idea for businesses -- and BSD/MIT a good idea for employees.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    But GPL is bad mmkay, Apple told me so. Seriously, I'm not surprised people haven't thought to take advantage of this aspect of GPL for their own selfish benefit. It's only when you're someone like Apple where BSD or MIT or any of the "permissive" licenses make sense for you, that or you really want to be self-less.
- sumedh 9y ago
  > They were selected as an open source test case. What exactly did the company expect would happen when you open source some high end algorithmic work which needed lot of money in R&D.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  Isn't this really a cautionary tale of bad licensing and not open-sourcing? https://choosealicense.com/ https://choosealicense.com/
pryelluw 9y ago
A small group of maintainers and me (also oss maintainer) are working on solving oss funding issues. This is not a startup or a pitch. If youd like to join the conversation drop me a line at pryelluw[at]gmail
nvivo 9y ago
I regret publishing some ideas I had as an open source project. Once it got other people's attention I had so much work trying to document, answer issues and maintain the project that in the end I got tired of it all and had to stop. I really loved the project, but open source is a lot of work, and most of it is not development, but choosing who to give attention, trust, etc, you must be prepared for that. If I kept it for myself I would probably still be working on it and would be using it in my work related projects.
nathancahill 9y ago
I maintain a mildly popular JS library on Github. I learned early on to be upfront that helping people with integrations costs me time. I get a handful of emails each day requesting assistance. I direct them to the README, Stackoverflow and this page: https://github.com/nathancahill/Split.js/wiki/Split.js-Support https://github.com/nathancahill/Split.js/wiki/Split.js-Suppo... This has worked out well, I've made money off of serious users and avoided a lot of painful back and forth with people who don't want to share code.
mmirate 9y ago
Obviously, anyone who made anything popular and permissively-licensed has undergone such regret when corporations scooped it up and used it gratis without contributing anything back. Lesson: if you use a permissive license, you are acknowledging that your work is worth nothing to you. Because that's what you'll get for it; whereas it may easily be worthwhile to sell a proprietary-licensed binary of your copylefted work.
devj 9y ago
Lot of comments indicate that the code authors regret making their code open source because somebody rebranded their code or sold it and made money. You always had a choice to stop development in the early stages and: 1) Make it proprietary - Why didn't you do it? 2) Have a commercial version - Why didn't you do it? 3) Change the license from MIT/Apache/etc - Why didn't you do it? 4) Charge for features/support/maintenance/etc - Why didn't you do it? When you use certain OS licenses, you give the permission to its user to do whatever they wish including selling it and therefore, complaining about it later doesn't make any sense. Mattermost for example, was APL. Then they changed it to AGPL because they experienced something similar. Gitea was born out of the frustration that the original code was not maintained properly. There are numerous examples like this. So stop complaining and take action else embrace open source with all your heart. When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general. - Richard Stallman
princekolt 9y ago
I don't know if it counts, but I have decided on not publishing a project I worked on (sporadically) for 14 months either as a binary or as open-source code because of previous experience with a fairly popular open-source software I published a few years ago. People expect you to work full-time on your project and get angry when you don't fix bugs. I have enough stress at work, where I'm paid to do things. That hasn't stopped me from making things open-source though, I still enjoy it, and it has caused me to contribute more to other projects.
richardknop 9y ago
I haven't regretted making anything open source. I do agree with the sentiment expressed here several times. Once my open source project gets popular it seems that there is a flood of incoming bug fix / feature requests and it is quite overwhelming. People expect you to just work on the open source library almost as it were your full time job (without a compensation). So that can be frustrating. This problem can be solved by finding skilled contributors who would be willing to work with you on maintaining the project but this can be quite difficult. Let's say your project is just reasonably popular (1-2 thousand stars on Github), you will be hard pressed to find willing contributors. It's much easier once the project gets very popular (5k stars I guess). It also depends on the language and niche of the library. Might be easier to find contributors in certain languages than others. Having said all that, my open source projects have actually paid me back in a way of interesting work opportunities that I wouldn't otherwise stumble upon. And it's a nice to have some reasonably well received open source project on your CV. Finally, I would like to shamelessly plug my project: https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery Core contributors / maintainers always welcome!
chafporte 9y ago
Copycats ! I've released a small library to display cross-platform dialogs (because I couldn't find what I needed) and 2 weeks later a copy cat released a similar Library/API but based on a different approach. In the next years, at least 2 other competing projects joined the party. Mine is tiny file dialogs.

352 points by haydenlee 9y ago

Definitely: the software for running World of Warcraft private servers, also known as MaNGOS. Founded and released that in 2005, got so much trouble because of that and wasted loads of cash to keep up project through numerous DDoS attacks, hacks (one of them even causing github downtime in 2013). oh well. Next :-)

tokenizerrr 9y ago
But did you regret making it open source, or doing it at all? Wouldn't most of those issues have still occurred had you kept the source closed, but ran such a server?
- marenkay 9y ago
  Definitely the open source part, as most of the issues were results of open sourcing it. This comes down to two parts being problematic: - we took away business from private servers as there was now an open source solution - applying the open source community model on the private server scene was a disaster. It was to idealistic. In hindsight, the open source part was basically painting a target on us. As an example: private servers running mostly use MaNGOS (there is not much else to use) and pretend to have built their own software and advertise by bashing MaNGOS.
  - tokenizerrr 9y ago
    Interesting! Could you give some more examples?
    - marenkay 9y ago
      Of course. Remember that huge buzz about how Blizzard should offer servers running older expansions that was headed by a private server named Nostalrius? Well, those guys used MaNGOS source code with just a few bug fixes, and snatched an invite to Blizzard: http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44218 http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=44218 In the end, the sources went public and it appears they were using a five year old MaNGOS codebase and not the famed "own codebase". A repeating pattern ever since 2005.
      - Omniusaspirer 9y ago
        While they certainly did use Mangos, it is worth pointing out for the less informed that they did a lot more than "a few bugfixes". If you compare the current Elysium core (taken from Nostalrius and opensourced) and the stock MaNGOS that existed at the time of Nostalrius launch there's absolutely no comparison- let alone if you compared 2005 MaNGOS as released by marenkay and what we have today after over 10 years of open source development from thousands of contributors. All of that said, myself and millions of others who have enjoyed classic servers over the years have you to thank for laying the foundation,and I agree with the other (downvoted) poster who says it saddens him a bit to see you regret something which has brought so much happiness to the world. If you ignore the selfish server administrators and look at the comments from some of the better parts of the community you'll quickly see that you've helped a lot of people cope with various ills in their lives, and many people have outright told me that they felt classic servers had helped them stave off depression or even suicide.
        marenkay 9y ago
        The comparison does not work because Nostalrius/Elysium actually uses a codebase from the around 2010. If you go back to old MaNGOS sources and do the diff on that old state you can see it is just a few bug fixes. It looks like Nostalrius and Elysium developers simply did not figure out that after that MaNGOS was split into distinct projects for each of WoWs expansions and decided to stay with pre-split version. /facepalm
  - zanny 9y ago
    And that is a situation where license alone wouldn't have helped, since even if you went and threw it under the AGPL most of the private servers operate outside US copyright jurisdiction so they can advertise themselves as private WoW servers in the first place. The community itself bashes a ton on private servers for taking GPL code, adding a bunch to it, and then never releasing changes even after they go under. It probably relates back to the general disinterest / apathy / ignorance of software freedom in gaming / hobbyist scenes in general, though. If you have never written a line of code in your life you probably have no idea how the world operates in regards to licensing. You don't distinguish VLC from Windows Media Player besides the visuals you see in front of you.
sturmen 9y ago
I had no idea it was so taxing, but I do want to let you know that MaNGOS is probably what set me on a path of learning programming (which has become my career) so I am indebted to you.
- marenkay 9y ago
  Always nice to hear it had some of the intended effects. The - albeit ideal - project goal always was to inspire people to learn development and engage with more complex issues.
mrkrabo 9y ago
Thanks to mangos I've played for years for free. I've made dozens of friends along the way. It's been a big part of my life and I'm very happy about it. Your project has made me and thousands of people very happy. So don't talk such rot.
- __s 9y ago
  This is about him, not you. He means you no ill will; only that the project was a burden to him, & he didn't receive much compensation besides the entitled thanks from such illustrious folk as Mr Krabo
  - mrkrabo 9y ago
    I don't know man. It bothers me that he feels like that about his project. Making people happy always means making some sacrifice.
  - marenkay 9y ago
    Probably is the whole point: there has not been many thankful moments, it was usually demands for more stuff being given away for free.
ghthor 9y ago
Thanks for all your hard work! Also you're a badass and those WoW private servers have been loads of fun for me and my friends!

fdik 9y ago

Never.

mherrmann 9y ago

Not me and not OS but Pieter Levels said he regretted offering an API for Nomad List [1]. [1]: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/861259743603470336 https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/861259743603470336

knocte 9y ago
That's not opensourcing something, but giving a service for free.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

_wmd 9y ago

Throwing random code over the wall is fairly harmless, until it sees any level of popularity, at which point you become the sole point of contact for a sea of people expecting bug fixes for free. That can be rewarding, but it can also be intensely draining. Imagine looking at your personal inbox giving you the same feeling of dread as you'd expect looking at your work inbox after being off for a few weeks.. I'm currently trying to offload one project because it's getting too much, and just finding a new maintainer who knows C and Python to a decent standard has turned out difficult. None of the regular project users have stepped up. Shrugs

shp0ngle 9y ago
Yeah, this is my experience as well Before open sourcing, I have that anxiety that people will look at my shitty code and judge. Nobody really looks at the code in reality. People just come, write some terribly written bug report, and then they write "+1" in github issues.
- yev 9y ago
  It is 100% same in my case..
- Klathmon 9y ago
  Until your code gets linked on HN or Reddit where people will then read the code and then proclaim that the person who created it must be dumb because of all of the obvious mistakes they made (generally ignoring the reasons for some of those choices as bad reasons). That's what is pushing me away from releasing code to the public. It's really crushing to my self worth as a developer to feel good about a project only to be told how awful it is and how it's broken by design.
  - zzzcpan 9y ago
    Why would you care what others think about your code? Nobody knows anything in this industry. There is so little important criticism, that even finding it if you really want to is super hard.

repomies6999 9y ago

While I don't regret it, last experiences with open source probably made me to not do it again. Essentially people seemed to assume that if I release a project, it also means that I'm require to provide free support for it, etc. The attitude from users of the software was depressing - in fact to me it feels that my paying customers are nicer on average.

rhlala 9y ago
Pretty sad comment.. I though the vast majority of open-source users were devs...
- butterfi 9y ago
  Dev's can be jerks too.
- shimo5037 9y ago
  At first most of your users tend to be fairly advanced. After all, they've even managed to somehow find the obscure thing you've made. This is the most rewarding time for an open source project as many of the issues are real and the quality of bug reports and feedback is extremely high. Over time, as the project gains popularity, many of these issues will either have been solved, or have become easily googlable. Therefore you'll rarely hear from the advanced, intelligent portion of your users, although it's also certainly possible that they've already moved on to shinier things. In the end, you tend to have a noticeable, vocal portion of users whom I'd generously call "social developers," who are bad at figuring things out by themselves and/or prefer asking things from another person to save a few minutes of their own time. Many of these users are very draining to deal with.
- xioxox 9y ago
  It depends on the project. Most of the people using my GUI plotting software Veusz [1] are not devs. Therefore I get a lot of questions on how to use it, bug reports, complaints and feature suggestions, but little in the way of code. [1] https://veusz.github.io/ https://veusz.github.io/
9y ago

num2499 9y ago

New car is coming Everything is safe.

num2499 9y ago

I'll make another virtual world

leeoniya 9y ago

i originally open-sourced some interesting algorithms built atop a lib i also open-sourced and realized later when building SaaS that it was unwise to have them open, so i force-pushed a commit that removed them from the repo after seeing that all public forks were out of date and did not have them yet. it helped that the lib never got popular so it was easy to do. there could still be some fork/clone somewhere that has them though :)

symisc_devel 9y ago

Not regretting it, but open sourcing our embedded PHP engine PH7[1] did hurt our sales (I think) when some Chinese company started abusing the software by embedding it in their hardware without paying any license fee (The software is dual licensed and require a commercial license for closed source code). I have a indirect proof of that abuse but starting a lawsuit against a Chinese co won't lead to any result? [1]: https://github.com/symisc/ph7 https://github.com/symisc/ph7

cubano 9y ago
Your project is super interesting to me as a recovering C programmer whom now makes a living with PHP...great job with the example as well. Even the links at the bottom of the readme are awesome.
Sholmesy 9y ago
Just wanted to say that project has a great readme.
kerneldeveloper 9y ago
In China, open source licenses don't have any legal effect, so it's hard to safeguard legal rights. In recent years some open source organizations have been founded and they hope their efforts can change the environment of open source in China. However, there is still a long way to go.
- sgroppino 9y ago
  Maybe a solution is to add some lines of code with special keywords to get your project blocked by the great firewall?
  - edko 9y ago
    Do you know of any project that successfully does this?
    - 9y ago

erikb 9y ago

The opposite. In my country it's really hard to get any ownership of your content if you are an employee. For instance you work as secretary for a bodyguard company and in your private time lead a pop-rock band. It's not impossible that your boss can grab a share of your music earnings. In this regard open-source is really helpful, because it enables me to write code in one gig that is good enough to earn my pay there, but allows me in a legal way to use the same code in my next gig. Instead of giving my boss monopoly over my long-term viable content, I make it free to everybody and therefore useful to my future self. I would even argue it's good for the boss too, since this way I am more motivated to produce, and 90% of the code used in production is totally useless once the author is gone, since most developers aren't good enough to reuse preexisting code and will instead start writing their own code from scratch.

sverige 9y ago
> For instance you work as secretary for a bodyguard company and in your private time lead a pop-rock band. It's not impossible that your boss can grab a share of your music earnings. What country is this? I can't imagine such a scenario outside of a serfdom.
- debaserab2 9y ago
  Happens all the time in employment contracts written in the United States. Not that they are necessarily enforceable, but it doesn't stop employers from trying.
  - sverige 9y ago
    I've seen the really broad contracts where basically anything you do while employed by them is theirs, but OP said that it would not be out of the question that the boss could get a cut of the earnings from music. Is there any place in the U.S. where a judge would enforce such a contract to that degree?
- adekok 9y ago
  In the US, it's possible for your employer to own your ideas: http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/ http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/ Follow-up: https://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown https://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown Solution: never disclose anything to your employer unless absolutely required. If you have a new idea, keep it quiet until you quit your job. FTA: (After 5 1/2 years of litigation, Judge Curt B. Henderson of Collin County, Texas' 219th District Court ruled in favor of Alcatel, and Brown was obliged to fully disclose the idea to Alcatel and only Alcatel, and to repay in full Alcatel's legal fees of more than $330,000, which according to Brown forced him to sell his house and other assets. During the court case, Brown argued that since his idea had never been committed to paper or physically manifested in any way, there were no grounds for the company to claim ownership of his very thoughts, and he drew comparisons to the fact that an invention cannot be copyrighted or patented until it is transferred from an idea onto paper. He didn't handle his case well, which torpedoed it. But in parts of the US, yes... anything you do during the course of your employment is owned by the employer. As a contractor, I've been asked to sign contracts with similar clauses. Uh... no. I have other customers, and you don't own what they pay me to do. Their typical counter is "But this is a standard clause". Telling them to "no contract" is usually the only option. They just can't understand why an entirely one-sided contract isn't good for me.

mholt 9y ago

I think I regret making Papa Parse[1] open source under the MIT license, anyway. Turns out it became incredibly popular and I missed a lot of opportunities to make a profit on the side. But it is used by government agencies around the world, and non-profit organizations like the UN and Wikimedia, so at least it's doing some good. But I know quite a few large businesses are using it at the core of their products... for free. Oh well. It was fun to build. [1] http://papaparse.com http://papaparse.com

sverige 9y ago
I'm a huge fan of the two-clause BSD license, but I can also understand that regret. I've always wondered how you would monetize something like this, though. It always seems difficult to me how you ensure that you're being paid without an army of lawyers (the Microsoft model) or limiting it to some sort of app store (the Apple / Google model). What would be the best way to do it, if you had it to do over again?
- mholt 9y ago
  Given that it's client-side JS, I'd probably just use an honor system. I'm not really a licensing law guy, but: Give it a license that businesses would not like to use (GPL?), then sell proprietary licenses to waive some of the requirements of GPL.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    But again he or she above you doesn't really want to enforce that. Enforcement of the GPL is a big problem. Who has the time and energy and money to sit around looking for violators? And then if you do find them you have to lawyer up and that costs a lot of money. You dont have any time or money to write code. The reality is you either accept people are going to use the code you OS and just let that code go (BSDL) or you keep it closed source. I like the idea I just posted above of a model of releasing the core code but letting actual users vote for and fund what bugs and new features get added to the free core code.

LeicaLatte 9y ago

Yes

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

88e282102ae2e5b 9y ago

I'm glad I did it, but it was definitely more work than I was expecting.

calpaterson 9y ago

One pattern I have seen a few times is that a company develops some important internal piece of software and then later the opens the source code (normally motivated by the notion that other people will contribute to it - which they rarely do). What normally happens next that the company loses control of this software which they probably didn't realise was so important to their core business as the employees who worked on it are empowered move to other companies and develop private forks or start up as a micro-ISV/contractor business based around providing private forks of the software to clients. I think what people don't realise is that most of the legal structure around open source software is for software used by end-users. For internal software the GPL doesn't function in the same way: other organisations are more than able to keep private forks and realise all the benefit of the software without contributing back.

neilk 9y ago

I'm encountering difficulties right now with a project I open-sourced. Some other people made it a core part of their business, but then I left the company, so I can't merge patches to the official branch. And to be honest I don't have the time to do this (I work for another growing startup). But it's still it's one of the best things I have ever done in computing. It was fun, and I got paid to do a kind of pure research, and enhance my own reputation while doing it. My former employer got free patches from very big and talented companies. I've made some interesting connections through this, that's for sure.

sheetjs 9y ago

We build open source tools for processing spreadsheet data (https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx is our largest and most popular open source project). Our open source tools have been used by government agencies, S&P 500/Dow companies, and startups alike. We've found people have taken the library, removed header comments, and sold as-is. Some startups have taken our web demo http://oss.sheetjs.com/ http://oss.sheetjs.com/, replaced the name with their own, and tried to use that to raise money. But those aren't really regrettable -- it's written off as "shameless people are shameless". The truth is, you can never really know what would have happened if you didn't open source in the first place. Would an open source alternative emerge? Would people pay for your project or would it die in relative obscurity? That's unknowable. If there's any regret, it's probably the amount of time spent doing support work for the open source libraries. It's not particularly interesting (usually pertaining to something in the README), time consuming (everyone seems to have their own secret project that they don't want to discuss, so you have to draw out the underlying issue slowly), and uncompensated.

lobotryas 9y ago
Just curious - did you take any action against those who violated your license or did you just let them be?
- Redoubts 9y ago
  And how does one even find out about such violations?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - wolfteets 9y ago
    My company uses https://nerdydata.com https://nerdydata.com to find websites that use our javascript tag without a license. So far it's been working nicely for us
- sheetjs 9y ago

byuu 9y ago

As a whole, I'm much more happy that I did than if I hadn't. Over the past 13 years, I've been developing console emulators for 12 systems and counting. If my work were closed source, I would not have received patches and contributions from 30+ people and counting. And I wouldn't have met several amazing people who ended up becoming very good friends for a very long time. One in particular has been amazing in helping me open up and be less guarded all the time. I was also able to sell one complete commercial license, and received a partial payment for a license from another company that then vanished (I tried to refund the latter, but e-mails to them no longer work.) I've received a very large number of donations over the years. Should be around $5000 in license sales, $7500 in donations, and another $2500 to fundraise hiring a person to decap chips and extract program code from them for improving emulation. I've also had multiple people make very specialized custom hardware that has helped me out more than words can express. I've had people trust me and lend me thousands of dollars worth of rare games for the purpose of verifying information for emulation and then returning them. But I would be lying if I said it was all good. At the time of writing, I am aware of eighteen forks of my emulator. Two of these projects in particular never talk to me or submit upstream fixes, and instead commit changes to their own repository with extremely derogatory remarks about me and my programming skills. Two of these intentionally undermine and sabotage the entire goal of what I've been working on from day one (namely, adding known-incorrect hacks to speed up emulation. My distaste for hacks was the whole reason I got involved with emulation in the first place.) Most of the forks of my software are from versions I released either three and a half years ago, or six years ago. A small number of them are quite popular, meaning my work may as well have been discontinued for those users. One fork collects over $2,000 a month on Patreon off the backs of others' emulator cores including mine -- even ones that are explicitly non-commercial. One developer just wantonly ignored my GPL license and sells my emulator on Steam, doesn't provide any attribution or credit for using my work, and plays games when people try and get the source code to said work (but to be fair, one person did obtain it.) That one was made particularly worse because he wasted a good 20+ hours of my time over the span of six months promising repeatedly to license my emulator, only to back away at the last minute and pull this without even telling me. I've had people very blatantly read through my source code to improve their emulators and documentation, and not just avoid giving me credit, but outright deny having ever looked at my code. In the most egregious case, someone copied a set of opcode mnemonics from a CPU core. Only ... that CPU core was never publicly documented: I made up every single mnemonic myself, and the only place those mnemonics existed were in my source code. I've ended up with two people who have harassed and impersonated me online for six and eleven years respectively now, for reasons I really can't comprehend. I've had half the main staff of the most popular emulator out there make a passtime of digging through my 400K-line codebase, looking for individual lines that were poorly written to mock completely out of context in a public chat area -- and they're people I still have to work with often. But what I always remind myself is, it's easier to dwell on the negatives. It's possible I could have made a lot more money with commercial licensing sales if my work were closed source. But my software is vastly better than it would be without all the help I've received over the years due to being open source. And I benefited a lot from other open source emulators, so it would be pretty selfish to not return the favor to others. There's no sense in me trying to force people to use my version of my software. I'd rather have a smaller number of users who actually fully appreciate what I'm going for. And I have a pretty thick skin at this point for the rest of it. That said, do put as much thought as you can into this before releasing as open source. Once you do so, you can never go back. Even if you try, your work will be forked at the last open source release. But speaking for myself, if I could go back and do it all again, I would still keep everything open source.

prodicus 9y ago

Nooo. Open source was always something I really believed in. I don't have projects which are used by the masses, but the random thanks by a stranger when he finds something I made and open sourced[1] as useful is priceless. But that's just me. [1]: https://github.com/tasdikrahman/ https://github.com/tasdikrahman/

christocracy 9y ago

I made an open source lib for Cordova (eventually ported to React Native and others). I found I'd gained a number of users with few contributing back, so I forked my own project, closed the source into compiled and encrypted binaries. Now I sell licenses and support, generating ~$20k/month. Innovation has skyrocketed since I've been able to dedicate 100% of my time to the products for the last 2.5 years.

thomastjeffery 9y ago
How do you think it would have been if you stayed with the open project, and just sold support?
- christocracy 9y ago
  Well, what I tell customers is "what you're paying for is support and latest updates. Customers get access to a private repo for latest updates and priority support for 1 year (yearly maintenance fee = $150/year). ~20% of customers pay the yearly. Each purchased key is bound to a mobile app id. If customer wants to make 3 apps, they need to purchase 3 keys. Public repo contains latest stable release; purchased keys unlock product in public repo forever. iOS lib is free. Only Android lib requires a key to unlock it. This gives users the chance to freely develop iOS first (and hopefully get hooked, like cheap crack ;). Chances are they're going to release an Android version too since most of the earth uses Android. The Android version is fully operational in DEBUG builds. Key is enforced for RELEASE builds.
nqzero 9y ago
can you imagine a not-quite-open-source license that would give you the best of both worlds ?
- christocracy 9y ago
  The model I have seems to work. I don't have any pressure to change anything.

CJefferson 9y ago

I have regretted using the GPL, twice. First time I made a project I wrote myself (a CP solver called Minion) GPL. I now know several companies had interest in it but we're afraid to put any GPL in their toolchain. I've never received useful external contributions, so I may as well have used BSD. The second is a project I work on where GPL V2 was chosen. Now some committers have passed away so we are stuck on 2, so can't link with other, GPL v3-only code

nfriedly 9y ago
I've had a couple of cases where companies pay me $5-10k for an commercial license of something I released free under GPL or AGPL - its rare, but it does happen. You can add a note along the lines of "commercial license available, contact me for details" in the readme. I do require that contributors assign copyright to me before I'll merge their PRs.
- dopeboy 9y ago
  What kind of software did you write that generated interest in a commercial license?
  - nfriedly 9y ago
    This guy: https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker https://github.com/nfriedly/node-unblocker It's a web proxy that can be used as a lib to tweak web pages on the way through.
mcguire 9y ago
You didn't use the "GPLv2 or later" clause?
- pm215 9y ago
  The Linux kernel is the most well known codebase that is specifically GPL-2-only. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other 2-only codebases made by people familiar with kernel development, either because they were influenced by the kernel's choice or because they wanted to be able to use code from the kernel. QEMU is in the latter boat -- we have code that was copied from the kernel, so effectively we're GPL-2-only despite having a fair amount of 2-or-later or BSD or other licensed source too. This is awkward because we'd really like to be able to use the binutils disassemblers, but we're stuck on the versions from the last GPL-2 binutils release...

KirinDave 9y ago

Yes. I did horrible things at the start of clj-time in my fork. I was so disgusted with my solution I abandoned it. Those decisions got propagated and didn't get fixed for a long time. I should have kept it closed and let someone else do it properly, rather than unless abandonware on the world. In fact, come to think of it, I regret everything I've ever open sourced. I can't think of even one time it lead to a positive outcome. I can't think of even one time it didn't lead to a decidedly negative outcome. The same is true of my writing. Every time I've wrote about the advancements of programming, people have made it their goal to oppose it and mock me over it. Lots of people love to talk about how great this community is. But I've never seen our world as much more than a slowly spreading cloud of venom in a larger medium of confusion. I've felt this way ever since the days when I was a kid and the title "hacker" was rigorously gatekept in local and isolated oligarchies.

nvivo 9y ago
That was very pessimistic, but I can see some truth in it.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  I don't understand why you'd find it "pessimistic." Would it be more "optimistic" to ignore all the bad things this community has done with and to me? That's not a thing I'm capable of doing. I do the work because I love it. The community hasn't welcomed me in any non-barbed way since the early 90s.

shmerl 9y ago

Any particular reason you'd expect someone to regret it?

suretec 9y ago

Not yet. Things we sponsor we always open source. They've always gone further than we ever hoped.

tyingq 9y ago

One use case that's often regrettable is software targeted at non-tech people. I made a free plug in for a shopping cart platform. Lots of happy users, but the occasional person ranting about how it doesn't work for them, and is expecting free troubleshooting and bug fixes on their schedule. A couple spinning into insults and swearing when the answer is "sorry, but I'm unable to help, maybe try a similar plugin from someone else".

20years 9y ago
I had a similar experience when I released an open source real estate search plugin for Wordpress years ago. It gained traction and was covered by a few very prominent real estate blogs/news sites which resulted in over 10,000 downloads in 2 weeks. There were some people who were not able to get it to work with their theme, shared hosting environment, other plugin conflicts, etc. and expected me to install/troubleshoot. I was spending almost my entire day trying to help people and I couldn't handle the demand especially with that many downloads in such a short period of time. So I decided to put up paid support versions ranging from $50 to $150. People flipped out when I did that and literally attacked me in comment threads. I tried explaining the time commitment this entailed and that it was taking me away from my core business but the mob didn't care. They were mad that I wasn't willing to install or troubleshoot their environment for free. I ended up taking the plugin down and since then (it's been 7 years) I haven't open sourced anything major and will probably never release a Wordpress plugin to the public again. In hindsight, I probably could have made decent money from that plugin if I charged for it initially. It probably would not have gained as much traction or popularity but I think the outcome would have been very different.

_Marak_ 9y ago

I released an open-source universal cryptocurrency banking website in 2013 called "Safewallet". It has decent google ranking for SEO terms related to open-source crypto banking. Every time the price of Bitcoin goes up I start getting emails from wantrepreneurs asking me to essentially work for them without pay because they "have a great idea" and "just need a little help getting the software working". During Bitcoin mania phases ( like now ) I'll get 2-3 of these emails a month. Too many stories to list. Everything ranging from offers of $2,000 to build a "BitStamp clone" or the time I was suppose to be having a sales call with the CEO and instead was greeted by their lead engineer with an endless list of questions on how they could build their own cryptocurrency bank. CEO got real nasty when I politely informed him they would have to pay me for my expert advice. They all want something for nothing and get an attitude when I tell them I'm not going to build them their own cryptocurrency bank for free or for minimal pay. Regret spending so much time on something which has only brought me grief. see: https://github.com/bigcompany/safewallet https://github.com/bigcompany/safewallet

nfriedly 9y ago
You could consider puttng something next to your contact info along the lines of "I offer consulting services for $X,XXX per day" or whatever. I've had good experience with putting that kind of offer on open source projects in the past - fewer emails, more respect, and occasionally a few $.
sumedh 9y ago
There is something wrong with your domain or someone is trying to mess with you. I see this when I opened the site safewallet.org Please update your contact information
- _Marak_ 9y ago
  I gave up on the project and let the domain lapse. Turns out I'm not very interested in running a bank.
GordonS 9y ago
Looks like ICANN have suspended safewallet.org for not having valid whois contact info?

Johnny_Brahms 9y ago

I have regretted my choice of licences, so now I only go copyleft. That has allowed me to monetize some small libraries with a pretty specific use case. Some companies wont use code they haven't got an invoice for.

geekodour 9y ago

I made a static blog generator based on github (https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog) I thought people will like it, It seems I wasted about 1month making that in my free time. I even wrote a funny blogpost about it in a blog generated by that generator ( https://geekodour.github.io/posts/dont-waste-your-time-making-your-own-open-source-project https://geekodour.github.io/posts/dont-waste-your-time-makin... )

fiatjaf 9y ago
Are you sad because your open-source project didn't get traction? That happens all the time with most people, I guess. Someday it may attract some people, but it is not a "fair" game. Chance matters a lot. I have at least 10 libraries on GitHub that I think should have gained some visibility, but didn't. There are thousands of similar cases. I suggest that you keep the idea machine on and keep building stuff.
- zzzcpan 9y ago
  Visibility is the easiest part, when you need it - just advertise and do PR, no reason to rely on a pure chance. Open source projects are often accepted by a lot of places, that do not allow ads for commercial products and services. But then you are going to have the same problem as others pointed out - doing free work. So unless you find a way to make your work on this project sustainable there is little point in gaining visibility.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    You can only say that after you've had visibility.
- geekodour 9y ago
  Thankyou very much for your advice :) I'll keep on making things.

arca_vorago 9y ago

I think the difference between Foss and "open source" should be noted in questions like this. Open source != foss

stutsmansoft 9y ago

I made a Delphi component once. It was immediately modified in ways I disagreed with, renamed, and spread by someone else. The person who did this didn’t even have a conversation with me about it before doing so. This was before GitHub and forking and such, but it made me feel angry and unappreciated. The code that went around was almost entirely my work. I’m still bitter 25 years later and I’ve never contributed to Open Sores again.

43224gg252 9y ago
It always seems to be the older generation that has this crappy immature attitude. I'm glad I have to work with less and less people like you.
- sumedh 9y ago
  > crappy immature attitude. Wow the guy the released his code for free which was used by others without giving him any credits and he is the one with crappy immature attitude.
- dang 9y ago
  This is a bannable offense on HN and we've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

devdad 9y ago

As a business owner, it's much easier for me to have an invoice (for the books) than explaining why I sent money through PayPal. Nothing is impossible, but it's more of a hassle for me to donate. We recently started to go through our commercial projects in a structured way and setup a small budget for OSS donations / support. Please setup some easy way to just give a receipt for support or anything else I can document. Purchase via CC is okay but I need receipts. :) Thanks to all creators in here that let's me keep a much higher development pace.

Steeeve 9y ago

I regret not making a good deal of software open source. But it's a tough decision depending on your market. One of the niches I specialized in was essentially taken over by an influx of offshore resources. It's like going into bizzaro world when you go to a meeting on a project and someone else is using your own powerpoint presentation and is doing it wrong. It's offensive when you go through project documentation and see that someone else has gotten paid for documents that you wrote for another customer - especially when they are not current. When I began experiencing this kind of thing, I felt confident in my decision _not_ to open source software. But the reality is that my biggest source of pride was given to the world at large. And all these years later I would appreciate having a lot of code which I no longer own in my portfolio. And while there are those who would have poached and pillaged my work, my income would have been minimally affected (or maybe not at all). The fact is that when I operated in that niche, the money I earned was all due to the fact that I was good, not because of any particular piece of software. Having a public portfolio of related software might have even brought in more business.

bane 9y ago

I can't get into details, but I worked at a place that was thinking about opening up some development for open source publishing. Another team was working on some very high-end algorithmic work in a specialized field and the company was pumping lots of money into internal R&D for that group. They were selected as an open source test case. They pushed up their code to github and within a few months a group of them had left the company to form a boot-strapped competitor using their same code -- essentially using the open source publication of their tools as a way to legally ex-filtrate corporate IP -- a nightmare scenario for many companies (and also recently in the news i.e. Uber v Waymo). This one act burned all open source publishing plans to the ground and now that company open sources as little software as possible. Now, several years later, they haven't published a single line of open source code that I'm aware of.

cannam 9y ago
One reason why a GPL licence can be a good idea for businesses -- and BSD/MIT a good idea for employees.
- noobermin 9y ago
  But GPL is bad mmkay, Apple told me so. Seriously, I'm not surprised people haven't thought to take advantage of this aspect of GPL for their own selfish benefit. It's only when you're someone like Apple where BSD or MIT or any of the "permissive" licenses make sense for you, that or you really want to be self-less.
sumedh 9y ago
> They were selected as an open source test case. What exactly did the company expect would happen when you open source some high end algorithmic work which needed lot of money in R&D.
pmarreck 9y ago
Isn't this really a cautionary tale of bad licensing and not open-sourcing? https://choosealicense.com/ https://choosealicense.com/

pryelluw 9y ago

A small group of maintainers and me (also oss maintainer) are working on solving oss funding issues. This is not a startup or a pitch. If youd like to join the conversation drop me a line at pryelluw[at]gmail

nvivo 9y ago

I regret publishing some ideas I had as an open source project. Once it got other people's attention I had so much work trying to document, answer issues and maintain the project that in the end I got tired of it all and had to stop. I really loved the project, but open source is a lot of work, and most of it is not development, but choosing who to give attention, trust, etc, you must be prepared for that. If I kept it for myself I would probably still be working on it and would be using it in my work related projects.

nathancahill 9y ago

I maintain a mildly popular JS library on Github. I learned early on to be upfront that helping people with integrations costs me time. I get a handful of emails each day requesting assistance. I direct them to the README, Stackoverflow and this page: https://github.com/nathancahill/Split.js/wiki/Split.js-Support https://github.com/nathancahill/Split.js/wiki/Split.js-Suppo... This has worked out well, I've made money off of serious users and avoided a lot of painful back and forth with people who don't want to share code.

mmirate 9y ago

Obviously, anyone who made anything popular and permissively-licensed has undergone such regret when corporations scooped it up and used it gratis without contributing anything back. Lesson: if you use a permissive license, you are acknowledging that your work is worth nothing to you. Because that's what you'll get for it; whereas it may easily be worthwhile to sell a proprietary-licensed binary of your copylefted work.

devj 9y ago

Lot of comments indicate that the code authors regret making their code open source because somebody rebranded their code or sold it and made money. You always had a choice to stop development in the early stages and: 1) Make it proprietary - Why didn't you do it? 2) Have a commercial version - Why didn't you do it? 3) Change the license from MIT/Apache/etc - Why didn't you do it? 4) Charge for features/support/maintenance/etc - Why didn't you do it? When you use certain OS licenses, you give the permission to its user to do whatever they wish including selling it and therefore, complaining about it later doesn't make any sense. Mattermost for example, was APL. Then they changed it to AGPL because they experienced something similar. Gitea was born out of the frustration that the original code was not maintained properly. There are numerous examples like this. So stop complaining and take action else embrace open source with all your heart. When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.” These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general. - Richard Stallman

princekolt 9y ago

I don't know if it counts, but I have decided on not publishing a project I worked on (sporadically) for 14 months either as a binary or as open-source code because of previous experience with a fairly popular open-source software I published a few years ago. People expect you to work full-time on your project and get angry when you don't fix bugs. I have enough stress at work, where I'm paid to do things. That hasn't stopped me from making things open-source though, I still enjoy it, and it has caused me to contribute more to other projects.

richardknop 9y ago

I haven't regretted making anything open source. I do agree with the sentiment expressed here several times. Once my open source project gets popular it seems that there is a flood of incoming bug fix / feature requests and it is quite overwhelming. People expect you to just work on the open source library almost as it were your full time job (without a compensation). So that can be frustrating. This problem can be solved by finding skilled contributors who would be willing to work with you on maintaining the project but this can be quite difficult. Let's say your project is just reasonably popular (1-2 thousand stars on Github), you will be hard pressed to find willing contributors. It's much easier once the project gets very popular (5k stars I guess). It also depends on the language and niche of the library. Might be easier to find contributors in certain languages than others. Having said all that, my open source projects have actually paid me back in a way of interesting work opportunities that I wouldn't otherwise stumble upon. And it's a nice to have some reasonably well received open source project on your CV. Finally, I would like to shamelessly plug my project: https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery Core contributors / maintainers always welcome!

chafporte 9y ago

Copycats ! I've released a small library to display cross-platform dialogs (because I couldn't find what I needed) and 2 weeks later a copy cat released a similar Library/API but based on a different approach. In the next years, at least 2 other competing projects joined the party. Mine is tiny file dialogs.