3 ms·

Work on letting the pettiness go because it will only make your own emotional recovery more difficult. Honestly, it might take years for you to fully recover m

Work on letting the pettiness go because it will only make your own emotional recovery more difficult. Honestly, it might take years for you to fully recover mentally but cynicism will just prolong it. If it helps you financially to not open the code because someone may yet still pay or because it saves you time then thats a good choice, don't feel bad one bit about it. But forget people who "should have paid" if it has no relevance now other than to torment you. You also may have an adjustment period as you go back to working for another company. It's weird because you feel like you've already grown out of that yet will be expected to fit in as a corporate soldier. I can offer hope you will eventually see an upside in personal growth. You'll realize that you've gained experience and expertise in running a company that's rare and extremely hard to come by any other way. Good luck on your road to recovery, don't give up.

nirvdrum 12y ago
Thanks for the concern. I've sorta gone through this before. I ran another company (Servprise International) for 4.5 years and went through the adjustment back to a full-time job. The biggest difference is this time I'm older and wanted to think about something I could reasonably see myself doing for 3 - 4 years, at least. I'm actually fairly at ease with things. Making the decision to leave it behind was liberating. Dealing with the BS required to shutdown a company is just annoying. But, the open source question has come up quite a few times. I wanted to give it more than a simple "no" answer and explain why. I feel like it's really a loaded question to ask a start-up that just shutdown, especially when it's not often asked of start-ups still running. I threw the pettiness quip in there to be intellectually honest. Taken out, I don't think it materially changes the decision. But I wanted to address it. I'm human. I certainly have irrational tendencies and I'm rather okay with that. Sure, I'll work on them, but humans aren't perfect automata even if this forum is wont to linking to Wikipedia pages on logical fallacies. Even after challenging that part, I couldn't find a strong enough set of pros to outweigh the cons in spending more time to give it away.

nirvdrum 12y ago

Thanks for the concern. I've sorta gone through this before. I ran another company (Servprise International) for 4.5 years and went through the adjustment back to a full-time job. The biggest difference is this time I'm older and wanted to think about something I could reasonably see myself doing for 3 - 4 years, at least. I'm actually fairly at ease with things. Making the decision to leave it behind was liberating. Dealing with the BS required to shutdown a company is just annoying. But, the open source question has come up quite a few times. I wanted to give it more than a simple "no" answer and explain why. I feel like it's really a loaded question to ask a start-up that just shutdown, especially when it's not often asked of start-ups still running. I threw the pettiness quip in there to be intellectually honest. Taken out, I don't think it materially changes the decision. But I wanted to address it. I'm human. I certainly have irrational tendencies and I'm rather okay with that. Sure, I'll work on them, but humans aren't perfect automata even if this forum is wont to linking to Wikipedia pages on logical fallacies. Even after challenging that part, I couldn't find a strong enough set of pros to outweigh the cons in spending more time to give it away.