Oh no, don't look – it's Developer Marketing (2024)

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10 pointsmooreds3 comments

I think with dev tools, the people you want to sell are people who aren’t posting online about their weekend projects.

I find online developer communities are exclusively those from the latter.

Recently, I built a tool to automate boring e2e tests for my own. I wanted to open source it and extend feature set but the thought of dealing with getting it out there is draining.

I used to have some open source tools that were suitable for enterprise use. After I got flooded with entitled emails from people requiring me to help them, I decided to just remove the open source tools instead.

I feel like we need to have a better word for "source available but don't bother me" projects. "Open source" nowadays can also mean the foundation for Amazon's next paid service ...

"I gave the baby a bath but then I had to throw away the bathwater, so I threw the baby away too".

It's perfectly possible, and very easy, to open-source some code and then never respond to any messages about it. Why do you feel that publishing the source comes with a responsibility to maintain it?

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