Ask HN: Dangers to making public young-project code? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Dangers to making public young-project code?

15 pointsprobinso11 comments

Have you ever had unforeseen negative consequences to making projects publicly view-able while in early (and incomplete) stages.

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Accidental release of sensitive info/keys/values etc.

If it's an alpha/beta or just a proof of concept then state that or you may have issues with public expectations.

If you plan on making a business around this project, might make some paths more difficult to take or lower the bar for competition.

I usually put something like

    # WARNING !! UNSTABLE WORK IN PROGRESS !! WARNING

At the top of my README.md if something isn't ready for public consumption.

Terribledactyl basically nailed the only issue I see: leaking your private information.

Other then that, I'm sure the other cautions that they bring up aren't as big of an issue.

You are basically ok in my book so long as you plop a copy-left license on it.

One danger is people will interfere with the initial vision for the product if a solid character/foundation is not developed yet.

If you take the time to set the tone for the project you have more room to resist change requests that are in conflict with the vision.

I have not seen any negative consequences of making project viewable on Github, rather the opposite where you missing out on opportunities to get noticed. I had the same thought last year when I started my first serious startup, we ended up not doing it which was a mistake because it made it so much more difficult to do later, because of shortcuts with secrets and Github issues, but in the end we did it later!

If you think about doing it, make no mistakes and just do it from the start!

competitors

Absolutely competitors. If you're building something relatively sophisticated, they can gain a competitive advantage over you by using portions of the code you've developed with your time/money.

GitLab!

Or bitbucket.

That is, if OP is really concerned about the $7. I don't think he is.

How would GitLab help with this, besides just being the code repository of choice?

In other words, what features does it offer for early stage projects that Github, Atlassian, etc don't?

not relevant

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