4 ms·

Closing Canario Terminal source code

46 points by atan2 2mo ago

nkrisc 2mo ago
But “open source” doesn’t mean you have to accept PRs or deal with other people, right? Can’t the source just be hosted somewhere with no PRs or issues or comments or anything? If they don’t want to do even that, then that’s fine, it’s their choice. But it seems like there’s a reasonable middle ground that’s just being skipped over.
- boesboes 2mo ago
  They still spam you to death and threaten you with violence if you don't reply soooo
  - ImHereToVote 2mo ago
    I don't understand why people don't just fork. Especially in the age of agentic AI. Take the code and slop it to your hearts content.
    - derdi 2mo ago
      Many people want "contributed to <well-known project>" on their CV.
      - ImHereToVote 2mo ago
        sad
  - barnabee 2mo ago
    Don't provide a way to do so. Just not using GitHub would probably solve most of the problems.
  - kasajian 2mo ago
    That b.s. It has to do with the fact that the project is not making it clear that it's not interested in PRs. Don't have Issues. Don't have PRs. Just push your code to github. Add to the README that this is a mirror of the actual development branch that follows an internal process. The Github repo is only used as a way to publish the latest snapshot of the source. The "going closed source" because of harassment is just an knee-jerk punitive reactionary response. It's akin to taking your ball and going home.
  - hoherd 2mo ago
    That is an orthogonal problem: popularity. What you're describing happens to proprietary software too. I have a bunch of OSS software that almost nobody cares about and I don't get bothered. The difference seems pedantic, but I bet there is something useful to learn there.
kasajian 2mo ago
He has a right to do anything he wants with hit source, but Open Source is nothing more than a license. We had GPL 2 before there was github. All you had to do is either deliver the source with your software, or make the source available upon request, even if it's by snail-mail. My only exception to this article is the section, "People underestimate what open source costs from the maintainer side. It’s not just writing code. It’s issues, pull requests, discussions, people demanding things from you for free. I got spammed like crazy. And now with AI, spamming a maintainer is so easy: low effort issues, generated pull requests, and every single one of them takes a bit of your time and energy" This is all self-inflicted. Don't take Issues. Don't take PRs. Make the repo read-only to everyone but you. There's zero effort, unless you're planning on keeping all the source on your computer and never push it anywhere. Well, I guess, in that case you're saving yourself from doing a push. So if you don't want to do all that stuff, that's fine. You don't have to. But don't pretend the only alternative is to close the source.
- tyromaniac 2mo ago
  100% agree. Especially since you wouldn't have to start taking his word for the things he explicitly lays out in this article, that previously were checkable at no additional cost to any party
- sixtyj 2mo ago
  I thought that GitHub supports some sort of locking repo, such as not allowing PRs? As X allows comments from accounts mentioned in tweet.
  - frizlab 2mo ago
    Disabling PRs and issues (and wiki and a bunch of other stuff) is indeed supported by GitHub AFAIK.
    - ameliaquining 2mo ago
      Note, though, that disabling PRs in particular is only a couple months old (and was prompted by the current wave of consternation around AI-assisted contributions). Before that you had to set up a bot that would just auto-close them and it still wasn't obvious in the UI that this was how it worked.
jicea 2mo ago
I think the SQLite model of contribution "Open-Source, not Open-Contribution" is a good middle ground to keep maintainer's sanity while having the code open [1]: "SQLite is open-source, meaning that you can make as many copies of it as you want and do whatever you want with those copies, without limitation. But SQLite is not open-contribution. In order to keep SQLite in the public domain and ensure that the code does not become contaminated with proprietary or licensed content, the project does not accept patches from people who have not submitted an affidavit dedicating their contribution into the public domain." [1]: https://sqlite.org/copyright.html https://sqlite.org/copyright.html
- derdi 2mo ago
  The text you quoted is purely about copyright/licensing, not about the maintainers' sanity. The more relevant quote is: "In order to keep SQLite completely free and unencumbered by copyright, the project does not accept patches from random people on the internet. There is a process to get a patch accepted, but that process is involved and for smaller changes is not normally worth the effort." Though this is still about copyright, not about being swamped with PRs.
  - UnlockedSecrets 2mo ago
    The issue of the maintainers sanity is the onslaught of random people or LLM's submitting packages, So how is not both quotes equally valid for the intended outcome of describing the restrictions required as to collaborate???
    - derdi 2mo ago
      You're right that the outcome may be similar, in that trivial contributions are discouraged. But the reasoning to getting there is completely different. Sqlite's copyright.html talks about copyright, not about maintainer overload. An otherwise overloaded maintainer of another project may probably be willing to accept individual brilliant contributions from brilliant contributors. Sqlite will not, no matter how brilliant, if the contributor doesn't sign an affidavit. Independent of Sqlite maintainer load. A known Sqlite contributor who has signed an affidavit, and has a history of good, accepted contributions, may also start spamming trivial contributions that may lead to maintainer overload, and nothing in copyright.html will prevent that.
rvz 2mo ago
The author highlights exactly what is wrong with doing "Open source" or "Build in public" in 2026. It now doesn't make any sense to someone to go full time open source (and running on donations) and it is completely thankless of your time anyway. AI has now made it far worse for them. But the most evergreen part of this is, developers will almost certainly never pay for their own tools and will always build their own and then expect to sell it to themselves, which doesn't work. So we will more close-sourcing which the author has the right to do.
- tancop 2mo ago
  open source will never die as long as there are crazy idealists (like me) who put their time into building things for free, and hope that they will make some random persons life a little bit better. not everyone is a silicon valley "hacker" looking for a bag or a line on their resume.
  - rvz 2mo ago
    No one said it will "die". > as long as there are crazy idealists (like me) who put their time into building things for free, and hope that they will make some random persons life a little bit better. You are only saying this from the perspective of having an employer paying you for everything. My point is about developers who don't have that and are doing full time "open source" for free which that is not sustainable in the long term. AI will only just make it less worth it for them to maintain open source software as such, unless companies or a substantial amount of other users / developers pay for support. I have never seen lawyers, mechanics, surgeons and financial advisors ever reduce their profession to free work or advice.
- prmoustache 2mo ago
  This has nothing to do with open source but to using an opened forge with no restrictions. As other have said you can always put your app and source code in a web page or read only repo and call it a day. Some people have been doing just that for decades. You don't even have to publish an email address or a real name.
efficax 2mo ago
Do what you want, sure. But people complain a lot about "open source maintenance". But you could just release the source and call it a day. Put up a web page with a tarball of the code, updated whenever you consider it a new release. You don't have to publish your git repo and allow pull requests and issues and all of that nonsense. None of that has anything to do with the purpose of open source, which is about giving access to the code that runs your computer so you can be in control of it.
- grosswait 2mo ago
  From TFA “The Canario source code is still there in the older versions of Rio. People can fork that if they want to. All good from my side.”
  - Wowfunhappy 2mo ago
    Yes, but if he's going to keep developing it on his end, why not release that source too? The source exists, so it's not any extra work to throw a tarball over the wall without any other engagement.
    - wildzzz 2mo ago
      Or just turn off issues and pull requests. To skip right ahead to a closed source project is a little suspicious.
st3fan 2mo ago
If you are on GitHub then you can also disable issues and only allow pulls from contributors (you). Then you still develop “in the open” but don’t take contributions.
ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
Prediction: "Companies will revert to closed-source and cease contributions to F/OSS projects." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203613
- jdiff 2mo ago
  This appears to be an individual rather than a company.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
eliasson 2mo ago
Not related to the post itself. But oh my, I visited the index page, that is a provocative mouse-cursor effect! I kind of like it!
gnarlouse 2mo ago
Isn't there a clause to opensource for "unmaintained, delivered as is?"
- wildzzz 2mo ago
  Open source licenses dictate permission to access to the source code, distribute it, change it, and distribute those changes. They say nothing about how the developer needs to maintain the project or provide support. There are FOSS licenses that mention warranties and support but that isn't exclusive to FOSS, plenty of closed source products come with zero support as well. Support generally comes into play when you pay money for something, which again, is completely separate from FOSS licenses.
hmokiguess 2mo ago
How ironic to see the comments here bringing exactly the kind of pressure he wants to walk away from. Skimming through the thread most seem to be telling him what to do instead of what he chose. Dude is probably just tired and needs a break, maybe he comes back, regardless I am thankful for his work and wish him joy in life.
- ameliaquining 2mo ago
  I guess my view is that it's right and proper for people to point out invalid arguments, even if they're being made to justify something that the author has the right to do anyway.
  - hombre_fatal 2mo ago
    But it's not an "invalid argument" to share your experience. Just like it's not an invalid argument to say you don't like chocolate ice cream. "Just ignore people who reach out to you" and "Just don't get burned out" aren't pointing out an invalid argument, either. It's just peanut gallery nonsense. Open source software is easy come, easy go. Part of that is accepting it when maintainers don't feel it's worth it anymore. And now with AI you basically have to choose between no contributors or a firehose of slop issues/PRs, something that changed overnight.
    - ameliaquining 2mo ago
      The article doesn't provide any support for the assertion that keeping the source code unreleased makes a bigger difference re: quantity of unwanted inbound communication than closing the conventional issue and PR channels. It instead equivocates between those two things. In that sense, its argument is invalid.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - cxr 2mo ago
      > it's not an "invalid argument" to share your experience <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy>
catlover76 2mo ago
[dead]
Aeolun 2mo ago
I don't really see how that works. I have my own terminal app (because I love cool retro terminal and kitty, but nobody combined them so far), built by Claude. It's open source. I don't think anyone but me uses it. There's nothing that says something I build only for myself can't be open source. I suspect it's more about the noise that comes along with it, if it's used by more people than you.
iluvcommunism 2mo ago
[dead]
malkosta 2mo ago
I'm probably missing something big...but after trying this herdr, conductor, etc...I always come back to ghostty+tmux+nvim....idk, maybe it's my old brain sticking to its existing synapses, but I find this setup much easier to maintain and more intuitive to think of whatever customization I need
ro_bit 2mo ago
Ultimately it’s the authors choice and the community is not entitled to anything, but I’m surprised the idea of remaining open source while closing PRs/issues isn’t brought up. I’m sure the author thought of doing that but didn’t, but I wonder why.

46 points by atan2 2mo ago

But “open source” doesn’t mean you have to accept PRs or deal with other people, right? Can’t the source just be hosted somewhere with no PRs or issues or comments or anything? If they don’t want to do even that, then that’s fine, it’s their choice. But it seems like there’s a reasonable middle ground that’s just being skipped over.

boesboes 2mo ago
They still spam you to death and threaten you with violence if you don't reply soooo
- ImHereToVote 2mo ago
  I don't understand why people don't just fork. Especially in the age of agentic AI. Take the code and slop it to your hearts content.
  - derdi 2mo ago
    Many people want "contributed to <well-known project>" on their CV.
    - ImHereToVote 2mo ago
      sad
- barnabee 2mo ago
  Don't provide a way to do so. Just not using GitHub would probably solve most of the problems.
- kasajian 2mo ago
  That b.s. It has to do with the fact that the project is not making it clear that it's not interested in PRs. Don't have Issues. Don't have PRs. Just push your code to github. Add to the README that this is a mirror of the actual development branch that follows an internal process. The Github repo is only used as a way to publish the latest snapshot of the source. The "going closed source" because of harassment is just an knee-jerk punitive reactionary response. It's akin to taking your ball and going home.
- hoherd 2mo ago
  That is an orthogonal problem: popularity. What you're describing happens to proprietary software too. I have a bunch of OSS software that almost nobody cares about and I don't get bothered. The difference seems pedantic, but I bet there is something useful to learn there.

kasajian 2mo ago

He has a right to do anything he wants with hit source, but Open Source is nothing more than a license. We had GPL 2 before there was github. All you had to do is either deliver the source with your software, or make the source available upon request, even if it's by snail-mail. My only exception to this article is the section, "People underestimate what open source costs from the maintainer side. It’s not just writing code. It’s issues, pull requests, discussions, people demanding things from you for free. I got spammed like crazy. And now with AI, spamming a maintainer is so easy: low effort issues, generated pull requests, and every single one of them takes a bit of your time and energy" This is all self-inflicted. Don't take Issues. Don't take PRs. Make the repo read-only to everyone but you. There's zero effort, unless you're planning on keeping all the source on your computer and never push it anywhere. Well, I guess, in that case you're saving yourself from doing a push. So if you don't want to do all that stuff, that's fine. You don't have to. But don't pretend the only alternative is to close the source.

tyromaniac 2mo ago
100% agree. Especially since you wouldn't have to start taking his word for the things he explicitly lays out in this article, that previously were checkable at no additional cost to any party
sixtyj 2mo ago
I thought that GitHub supports some sort of locking repo, such as not allowing PRs? As X allows comments from accounts mentioned in tweet.
- frizlab 2mo ago
  Disabling PRs and issues (and wiki and a bunch of other stuff) is indeed supported by GitHub AFAIK.
  - ameliaquining 2mo ago
    Note, though, that disabling PRs in particular is only a couple months old (and was prompted by the current wave of consternation around AI-assisted contributions). Before that you had to set up a bot that would just auto-close them and it still wasn't obvious in the UI that this was how it worked.

jicea 2mo ago

I think the SQLite model of contribution "Open-Source, not Open-Contribution" is a good middle ground to keep maintainer's sanity while having the code open [1]: "SQLite is open-source, meaning that you can make as many copies of it as you want and do whatever you want with those copies, without limitation. But SQLite is not open-contribution. In order to keep SQLite in the public domain and ensure that the code does not become contaminated with proprietary or licensed content, the project does not accept patches from people who have not submitted an affidavit dedicating their contribution into the public domain." [1]: https://sqlite.org/copyright.html https://sqlite.org/copyright.html

derdi 2mo ago
The text you quoted is purely about copyright/licensing, not about the maintainers' sanity. The more relevant quote is: "In order to keep SQLite completely free and unencumbered by copyright, the project does not accept patches from random people on the internet. There is a process to get a patch accepted, but that process is involved and for smaller changes is not normally worth the effort." Though this is still about copyright, not about being swamped with PRs.
- UnlockedSecrets 2mo ago
  The issue of the maintainers sanity is the onslaught of random people or LLM's submitting packages, So how is not both quotes equally valid for the intended outcome of describing the restrictions required as to collaborate???
  - derdi 2mo ago
    You're right that the outcome may be similar, in that trivial contributions are discouraged. But the reasoning to getting there is completely different. Sqlite's copyright.html talks about copyright, not about maintainer overload. An otherwise overloaded maintainer of another project may probably be willing to accept individual brilliant contributions from brilliant contributors. Sqlite will not, no matter how brilliant, if the contributor doesn't sign an affidavit. Independent of Sqlite maintainer load. A known Sqlite contributor who has signed an affidavit, and has a history of good, accepted contributions, may also start spamming trivial contributions that may lead to maintainer overload, and nothing in copyright.html will prevent that.

rvz 2mo ago

The author highlights exactly what is wrong with doing "Open source" or "Build in public" in 2026. It now doesn't make any sense to someone to go full time open source (and running on donations) and it is completely thankless of your time anyway. AI has now made it far worse for them. But the most evergreen part of this is, developers will almost certainly never pay for their own tools and will always build their own and then expect to sell it to themselves, which doesn't work. So we will more close-sourcing which the author has the right to do.

tancop 2mo ago
open source will never die as long as there are crazy idealists (like me) who put their time into building things for free, and hope that they will make some random persons life a little bit better. not everyone is a silicon valley "hacker" looking for a bag or a line on their resume.
- rvz 2mo ago
  No one said it will "die". > as long as there are crazy idealists (like me) who put their time into building things for free, and hope that they will make some random persons life a little bit better. You are only saying this from the perspective of having an employer paying you for everything. My point is about developers who don't have that and are doing full time "open source" for free which that is not sustainable in the long term. AI will only just make it less worth it for them to maintain open source software as such, unless companies or a substantial amount of other users / developers pay for support. I have never seen lawyers, mechanics, surgeons and financial advisors ever reduce their profession to free work or advice.
prmoustache 2mo ago
This has nothing to do with open source but to using an opened forge with no restrictions. As other have said you can always put your app and source code in a web page or read only repo and call it a day. Some people have been doing just that for decades. You don't even have to publish an email address or a real name.

efficax 2mo ago

Do what you want, sure. But people complain a lot about "open source maintenance". But you could just release the source and call it a day. Put up a web page with a tarball of the code, updated whenever you consider it a new release. You don't have to publish your git repo and allow pull requests and issues and all of that nonsense. None of that has anything to do with the purpose of open source, which is about giving access to the code that runs your computer so you can be in control of it.

grosswait 2mo ago
From TFA “The Canario source code is still there in the older versions of Rio. People can fork that if they want to. All good from my side.”
- Wowfunhappy 2mo ago
  Yes, but if he's going to keep developing it on his end, why not release that source too? The source exists, so it's not any extra work to throw a tarball over the wall without any other engagement.
  - wildzzz 2mo ago
    Or just turn off issues and pull requests. To skip right ahead to a closed source project is a little suspicious.

st3fan 2mo ago

If you are on GitHub then you can also disable issues and only allow pulls from contributors (you). Then you still develop “in the open” but don’t take contributions.

ButlerianJihad 2mo ago

Prediction: "Companies will revert to closed-source and cease contributions to F/OSS projects." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49203613

jdiff 2mo ago
This appears to be an individual rather than a company.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

eliasson 2mo ago

Not related to the post itself. But oh my, I visited the index page, that is a provocative mouse-cursor effect! I kind of like it!

gnarlouse 2mo ago

Isn't there a clause to opensource for "unmaintained, delivered as is?"

wildzzz 2mo ago
Open source licenses dictate permission to access to the source code, distribute it, change it, and distribute those changes. They say nothing about how the developer needs to maintain the project or provide support. There are FOSS licenses that mention warranties and support but that isn't exclusive to FOSS, plenty of closed source products come with zero support as well. Support generally comes into play when you pay money for something, which again, is completely separate from FOSS licenses.

hmokiguess 2mo ago

How ironic to see the comments here bringing exactly the kind of pressure he wants to walk away from. Skimming through the thread most seem to be telling him what to do instead of what he chose. Dude is probably just tired and needs a break, maybe he comes back, regardless I am thankful for his work and wish him joy in life.

ameliaquining 2mo ago
I guess my view is that it's right and proper for people to point out invalid arguments, even if they're being made to justify something that the author has the right to do anyway.
- hombre_fatal 2mo ago
  But it's not an "invalid argument" to share your experience. Just like it's not an invalid argument to say you don't like chocolate ice cream. "Just ignore people who reach out to you" and "Just don't get burned out" aren't pointing out an invalid argument, either. It's just peanut gallery nonsense. Open source software is easy come, easy go. Part of that is accepting it when maintainers don't feel it's worth it anymore. And now with AI you basically have to choose between no contributors or a firehose of slop issues/PRs, something that changed overnight.
  - ameliaquining 2mo ago
    The article doesn't provide any support for the assertion that keeping the source code unreleased makes a bigger difference re: quantity of unwanted inbound communication than closing the conventional issue and PR channels. It instead equivocates between those two things. In that sense, its argument is invalid.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - cxr 2mo ago
    > it's not an "invalid argument" to share your experience <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy>

catlover76 2mo ago

[dead]

Aeolun 2mo ago

I don't really see how that works. I have my own terminal app (because I love cool retro terminal and kitty, but nobody combined them so far), built by Claude. It's open source. I don't think anyone but me uses it. There's nothing that says something I build only for myself can't be open source. I suspect it's more about the noise that comes along with it, if it's used by more people than you.

iluvcommunism 2mo ago

[dead]

malkosta 2mo ago

I'm probably missing something big...but after trying this herdr, conductor, etc...I always come back to ghostty+tmux+nvim....idk, maybe it's my old brain sticking to its existing synapses, but I find this setup much easier to maintain and more intuitive to think of whatever customization I need

ro_bit 2mo ago

Ultimately it’s the authors choice and the community is not entitled to anything, but I’m surprised the idea of remaining open source while closing PRs/issues isn’t brought up. I’m sure the author thought of doing that but didn’t, but I wonder why.