> as soon as something's open sourced, you're now dealing with a lot of community management work which is onerous.
This is a common misconception. You can release the source code of your software without accepting contributions.
This is a common misconception. You can release the source code of your software without accepting contributions.
it's not even contributions, but that other people might start asking for features, discuss direction independently (which is fine, but jblow has been on the record saying that he doesn't want even the distraction of such).
The current idea of doing jai closed sourced is to control the type of people who would be able to alpha test it - people who would be capable of overlooking the jank, but would have feedback for fundamental issues that aren't related to polish. They would also be capable of accepting alpha level completeness of the librries, and be capable of dissecting a compiler bug from their own bug or misuse of a feature etc.
You can't get any of these level of control if the source is opened.
> 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.
But it used to read
> 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 unknown persons.
(I randomly picked a date and found https://web.archive.org/web/20200111071813/https://sqlite.or... )
What chii is suggesting is open sourcing Jai now may cause nothing but distractions for the creator with 0 upside. People will write articles about its current state, ask why it's not like their favorite language or doesn't have such-and-such library. They will even suggest the creator is trying to "monopolize" some domain space because that's what programmers do to small open source projects.
That's a completely different situation from Sqlite and Linux, two massively-funded projects so mature and battle-tested that low-effort suggestions for the projects are not taken seriously. If I write an article asking Sqlite to be completely event-source focused in 5 years, I would be rightfully dunked on. Yet look at all the articles asking Zig to be "Rust but better."
I think you can look at any budding language over the past 20 years and see that people are not kind to a single maintainer with an open inbox.
There are positives and negatives to it, I'm not naive to the way the world works. People have free speech and the right to criticise the language, with or without access to the compiler and toolchain itself, you will never stop the tide of crazy.
I personally believe that you can do opensource with strong stewardship even in the face of lunacy, the sqlite contributions policy is a very good example of handling this.
Closed or open, Blow will do what he wants. Waiting for a time when jai is in an "good enough state" will not change any of the insanity that you've mentioned above.
> Waiting for a time when jai is in an "good enough state" will not change any of the insanity that you've mentioned above.
I outlined some reasons why I think it would, and I think there's good precedent for that.
> the choice is not ours to make
I never said it was.
> People have free speech
I don't think I argued people don't have free speech? This is an easily defensible red herring to throw out, but it's irrelevant. People can say whatever they want on any forum, regardless of the projects openness. I am merely suggesting people are less inclined to shit on a battle-tested language than a young, mold-able one.
You say this now but between 2013 - around 2023, The definition of Open source is that if you dont engage with the community and dont accept PRs it is not open source. And people will start bad mouth the project around the internet.
Working on a project is hard enough as it is.
Again, not between 2015 - ~2023. And after what happened I dont blame people who dont want to do it.
And in case you somehow thinks I am against you. I am merely pointing out what happened between 2013 - 2023. I believe you were also one of the only few on HN who fought against it.
You'd be really hard pressed to find somebody who doesn't consider SQLite to be open source.
Releasing it when you're not ready to collect any upside from that decision ("simply ignore them") but will incur all the downside from a confused and muddled understanding of what the project is at any given time sounds like a really bad idea.
A lot of things being open sourced are using open source as a marketing ploy. I'm somewhat glad that jai is being developed this way - it's as opinionated as it can be, and with the promise to open source it after completion, i feel it is sufficient.
When you're a somewhat famous programmer releasing a long anticipated project, there's going to be a lot of eyes on that project. That's just going to come with hassle.
Well, it is the public internet, people are free to discuss whatever they come across. Just like you're free to ignore all of them, and release your software Bellard-style (just dump the release at your website, see https://bellard.org/) without any bug tracker or place for people to send patches to.
You have the legal right to use, share, modify, and compile, SQlite's source. If it were Source Available, you'd have the right to look at it, but do none of those things.
I doubt we're going to come to an agreement here, though, so I'll leave it at that.
Emphasis on even. It can have such rights, or not, the term may still apply regardless.
Open source is not a philosophy, it is a license.
We're debating made up stuff here. The reality is all in our collective heads.
Keeping things closed source is one way of indicating that. Another is to use a license that contains "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED [...]" and then let people make their own choices. Just because something is open source doesn't mean it's ready for widespread adoption.