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Ask HN: If you created something, but nobody was there, does it exist?
In a world where everyone constantly blogs and posts about their work, and discloses how it works and increasingly open sources it, what do you do if you want to keep it proprietary to avoid competitors benefiting from it? I have been in this exact situation, and by doing so, perceive to be "in the back seat" compared to those who constantly disclose and open source their work even if it is nowhere close in functionality or quality/performance.
I'm interested in hearing from other founders / entrepreneurs who have worked on projects for years, which they have publicly shown, but for which they never open sourced the source code or other intellectual property, and have encountered situations where their work has been ignored or dismissed, simply because they didn't disclose publicly how something works, or because they didn't open source their work.
- joshxyz 4y agohmmm part of me thinks the people who need it will reverse engineer it and rebuild a version of it, or they will find a more accessible / opensource alternative, or will pay someone to make it or to give them access to it. those who dont need it simply wont give a f?
- b20000 4y agoin my specific case there has been a VC-funded startup that tried to do the same thing, in a different market, and created a shittier version of the product, then went bankrupt, as they couldn't make the product better. we are talking hardware here, and the market was not the problem (their market was bigger). so rather than getting in touch and making a deal, they decided it was better to go under (and the VC was familiar with what we had and that we were already in the market).
- joshxyz 4y agoThat's kinda nuanced imo, like maybe unless you really ask someone from there, it would be hard to discern as an outsider if they went under because their engineering team suck, or their marketing + sales team suck, or their founding team suck, or the market demand just sucks, or since it's hardware the sourcing / assembly / logistics of the product suck. The investors could suck too, if they are chasing metrics and returns at a projected timeline but the product-market fit isn't there yet, sometimes they'd pull out and see it as them cutting their losses. I wonder what your goals are, too. Like, is it to just keep it to yourself (which is entirely okay), or to try to make some money out of it while keeping things proprietary (which could open you to some challenges, as a developer myself creating the software i personally enjoy and find useful is a pleasure, but turning it into a business is entirely a different thing).
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- markus_zhang 4y agoI'm sure the universe exists before the first human appeared.