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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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You can simply ignore them. This worked for many smaller programming languages so far, and there exist enough open source softwares that are still governed entirely by a small group of developers. The closedness of Jai simply means that Blow doesn't understand this aspect of open source.

I believe sqlite does this.

Famously, yes: https://sqlite.org/copyright.html (see "Open-Source, not Open-Contribution")

By my reading, the restriction seems to simply impose some (reasonable?) legal restrictions on contributions rather than ban them out of principle.

Interesting, they've softened their stance. Today, it reads

> 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... )

Seems to be hardened not softened: a person who has submitted an affidavit dedicating code fo the public domain is at least minimally known, but a person may be known without submitting an affidavit, so the new form is strictly a stronger restriction than the old one.

I claim the edit is neither a hardening nor a softening but rather a clarification and an attempt to better explain the original intent.

That kind of means jack squat though. Jai is an unfinished *programming language*, Sqlite is an extremely mature *database*.

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.

We can muse about it all day, the choice is not ours to make. I simply presented the reality that other succcessful open source projects exist that were also in 'early development state'.

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.

I don't have a stake in this particular language or its author, I was just discussing the pros and cons of the approach.

> 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 can simply ignore them.

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.

Open source softwares with closed development model have existed for a very long time so that should have been considered no matter it was considered as open source or not. (And I think it was around 2000s, not 2010s, when such misconception was more widespread.)

I dont deny what you said. I am merely pointing out this isn't a popular modem or opinion between that time line.

Linux doesn't take PRs on github, and sqlite doesn't take patches. Open Source isn't a community model, only a license model.

>Open Source isn't a community model, only a license model.

Again, not between 2015 - ~2023. And after what happened I dont blame people who dont want to do it.

So your position is that Linux no longer counts as open source?

Linux started before 2013? So did SQLite? And both are not even comparable as they were the dominant force already and not a new started project.

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.

> if you dont engage with the community and dont accept PRs it is not open source

You'd be really hard pressed to find somebody who doesn't consider SQLite to be open source.

That was never the definition of open source. That may have been how people were using it, but they were in error if so.

Well except no one pushed against it at the time. Worth remember that.

Maybe there's aspirations to not be a "smaller programming language" and he'd rather not cause confusion and burn interested parties by having it available.

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.

In that case the release interval can be tweaked, just frequent enough to keep people interested.

It seems to be there's already enough interest for the closed beta to work.

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.

Yep. A closed set of core language designers who have exclusive right to propose new paths for the language to take while developing fully Free and in the open is how Zig is developing.

Ignoring people is by itself tedious and onerous. Knowing what I do about him and his work, and having spent some time watching his streams, I can say with certainly that he understands open source perfectly well and has no interest -- nor should he -- in obeying any ideology, yours for instance, as to how it's supposed to be handled, if it doesn't align with what he wants. He doesn't care whether he's doing open source "correctly."

Yeah, he is free to do anything as he wants, but I'm also free to ignore his work due to his choice. And I don't think my decision is unique to me, hence the comment.

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