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Setting aside the licensing issues, and assuming it's just because I don't feel like dealing with obnoxious people, something still doesn't make sense to me. P

Setting aside the licensing issues, and assuming it's just because I don't feel like dealing with obnoxious people, something still doesn't make sense to me. Prior to announcing the shutdown, no one had access to the source. I've made a lot of it available since then, but not all of it. Today, they still don't have access to that source. How is society any worse off? Unless your belief is simply that all code should be open source. And that's fine, but then it doesn't really seem tied to the shutdown of the company.

rudolf0 12y ago
No, I don't think all code should be open source at all. Humanity isn't worse off for it if you don't release the source, but you could potentially make humanity better off by releasing it. If you keep it to yourself forever, never to be used or seen again, you reduce the chance of helping someone's project or improving someone's life to 0%. If you do release it, there's that chance that a few people out there will borrow some of its ideas to help them out, or perhaps they'll actually use the entire codebase so they don't reinvent the wheel. This could save them a lot of time and effort. Or maybe a non-coder will use it because they genuinely want to use the app. And who knows, maybe it'll be a lot more than a few people. It's just a bit existentially sad to essentially lock all that code produced out of so many man hours in a little sphere that is never opened again. For a good example of this, look at Isaac Newton's unreleased works. If you really don't want to appease obnoxious beggars from companies, you can just release it with a license that restricts all, or certain kinds, of commercial use.