Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?

4 paulwilsonn 2 8/2/2025, 11:37:00 AM

Open source is usually seen as a win - for learning, visibility, and the community. But have you ever regretted it?

Maybe it became a burden to maintain, attracted the wrong users, or got used in ways you didn’t expect.

Would love to hear your experience - good or bad.

Comments (2)

sexyman48 · 1h ago

Steve Ballmer nailed it when he said GPL is a cancer. No professional programmer wants to open source anything, but once one competitor does it, he must follow suit to stay competitive.

incomingpain · 1h ago

>Maybe it became a burden to maintain,

This is literally why i think AI coding cant touch dev jobs.

In theory you can code LOADS of projects. Want a panel widget on your desktop environment, dont even know what language its in? ask ai to produce it.

but when you have open source projects, people from all over the world bring their requests and problems to you. Some are great to just merge, others you have no clue what they are doing wrong but it's totally them; and you get paid in github stars? Now there's a bunch of open source projects that are just working for me every day, but i havent modified in years and they look stagnant.

but even in the non-open source realm, no dev wants to forever maintain a project. Its not a regret, just 1 dev can probably only be responsible for a handful of codebases/projects and ai coding isnt going to super expand this.

Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2025)

Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2025)

Ask HN: Will AI push more of us into freelancing?