Comment by jongjong

I don't regret open sourcing my libraries. One of them got some traction and provided me with opportunities which eventually led me to earn passive income for 3 years and I was able to live in Malta, going snorkeling in the Mediterranean every other day while working casually on whatever side projects I wanted.

That said, I feel like things could have worked out better given how much time I invested beforehand and how everything had been clicking into place until my 5 year plan fell apart suddenly around the time of COVID. It all went perfectly until the very end when other people's irrationality and corruption ruined everything.

I probably won't be open sourcing my more innovative recent work. I'd want to see traction before I open source that one and I'm not convinced that open sourcing would make a difference in terms of getting traction.

When something could benefit from being open sourced, it's kind of obvious.

I think if I hadn't open sourced that other project, it would have gotten me nowhere and I would have gotten no value out of it so that was definitely the right move.

My more recent work is a serverless platform. I really wish I could open source it. It's probably better than anything else of its kind but I'm not convinced that people would understand the value provided because you have to use it for at least 1 hour to have your mind blown... But I can't convince people to invest 1 hour into trying it. Big chicken and egg problem.

Also, my understanding of business is that it doesn't make sense to offer a product whose quality exceeds people's perception limits. Outside of the luxury sector, nobody will pay for surplus value which they cannot fully sense, not even if it's 'free'; they won't invest their time. Also, my target audience are developers and they often like using suboptimal, time-consuming tools which allow them to do busy-work. They charge by the hour after all. It's like the target audience is communist so it's stupid to look at them through a capitalist free-market lens.