Ask HN: Have you regretted making something open-source? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER4> We build open source tools for processing spreadsheet data ([https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx](https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx) is our largest and most popular open source project). Our open source tools have been used by government agencies, S&P 500/Dow companies, and startups alike. We've found people have taken the library, removed header comments, and sold as-is. Some startups have taken our web demo [http://oss.sheetjs.com/](http://oss.sheetjs.com/), replaced the name with their own, and tried to use that to raise money. But those aren't really regrettable -- it's written off as "shameless people are shameless".

The truth is, you can never really know what would have happened if you didn't open source in the first place. Would an open source alternative emerge? Would people pay for your project or would it die in relative obscurity? That's unknowable.

If there's any regret, it's probably the amount of time spent doing support work for the open source libraries. It's not particularly interesting (usually pertaining to something in the README), time consuming (everyone seems to have their own secret project that they don't want to discuss, so you have to draw out the underlying issue slowly), and uncompensated.

<comment><USER5> I've discovered that "shameless people are shameless" is surprisingly common. I stumbled across a site for a new JS book one day, and it looked exactly like the personal site of one of our frontend developers. I asked him if he started selling his site as a template, and he goes pale. About 15 minutes later we found where someone had lifted all the assets off his site, replaced his name and photo, and put it up for sale on ThemeForest. Didn't even remove all the comments he left in the code. Dude was making about $2k a month with it. He ended up having to send him a cease and desist, and the guy only gave him about $3k as a settlement.

<comment><USER4> The comment wasn't intended to be diminutive. There happen to be many shameless people looking to make a quick buck, but few of those people would pay if you didn't open source in the first place (or if you offered them a chance to purchase a commercial license). Even with your coworker, the only reason he received money was because the offender made a lot more from it.

<comment><USER6> It's probably a good thing that people maintain a disdain for freeloading, though. It's important for at least some of the gains from a new creation to go to the creator, otherwise the market for whatever product will stagnate because the people with resources are not the people with ideas.

<comment><USER7> Freeloading but also copyright violation. No different to selling a cracked Windows installer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Throwing random code over the wall is fairly harmless, until it sees any level of popularity, at which point you become the sole point of contact for a sea of people expecting bug fixes for free. That can be rewarding, but it can also be intensely draining.

Imagine looking at your personal inbox giving you the same feeling of dread as you'd expect looking at your work inbox after being off for a few weeks..

I'm currently trying to offload one project because it's getting too much, and just finding a new maintainer who knows C and Python to a decent standard has turned out difficult. None of the regular project users have stepped up. Shrugs

<comment><USER9> Exactly this experience happens in big teams internally as well.

It works like this according to my experience: You see a problem before it really does financial harm to the company. You start developing a solution. You expect to get rewarded with prices, raises, titles and public encouragement, because you solved the problem before anybody even saw it.

But instead this will happen: The employees who run into the problem first and therefore would be the one who suffer from it, find that your solution may be an answer. But instead of making it work they find ways to complain about it publicly. Since management hasn't yet realized that there is a problem, they just hear that you are not doing your job and put pressure on you to fix all the bugs, because of your bugs nobody else can work, so it seems.

This is not stupid by the other people or by accident. The moment they have found a way to complain about you it doesn't matter anymore if the task will be successful or not, since a failure wouldn't be blamed on them anymore as well. Everybody knows that the bugs are your fault, right?

In this regard open source seems less harmful to me. In open source at least there is no boss who can push you to solve the bugs, or fire you if you don't.

<comment><USER10> Companies are generally hierarchical systems. By developing the solution on your own initiative, you bypassed that. You should never expect a good reaction from a social system when you break its rules, even if for its own benefit.

<comment><USER11> One thing that's so confounding about this is that so many hierarchical organizations (companies, non-profits, universities, etc) encourage "initiative", but then when you take that initiative, you may/often catch shit for it, even if you're doing the right thing from an objective point of view. Of course, there are complex politics at play and the reaction you get depends on largely on "who you know" and if you effectively kiss ass.

<comment><USER10> There was a semi-famous author in my city who did that on a personal level: he would ask his friends to keep part of his paycheck until a certain day, and not give it to him even if he asked, since he knew he'd misspend it all (often by just being generous to friends and people in need).

More than once, not only did he ask for the money before the date, as upon being denied, he went around in coffeeshops and bars defaming them, telling people they'd stolen from him, etc.

If even individuals can be this inconsistent, we shouldn't be surprised that companies - composed of multiple private interests, as many as their employees and board members - exhibit similar behaviors.

<comment><USER12> It is like a gambling addict who enrolls themself voluntarily on a gambling ban list and then does everything possible to get back into the casino.

<comment><USER13> I once enabled noprocrast here, that was hell

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not regretting it, but open sourcing our embedded PHP engine PH7[1] did hurt our sales (I think) when some Chinese company started abusing the software by embedding it in their hardware without paying any license fee (The software is dual licensed and require a commercial license for closed source code). I have a indirect proof of that abuse but starting a lawsuit against a Chinese co won't lead to any result?

[1]: [https://github.com/symisc/ph7](https://github.com/symisc/ph7)

<comment><USER15> In China, open source licenses don't have any legal effect, so it's hard to safeguard legal rights. In recent years some open source organizations have been founded and they hope their efforts can change the environment of open source in China. However, there is still a long way to go.

<comment><USER16> Could you expand on that?

China's laws implement the Berne Convention, making copyright automatic.

Open source licenses usually provide conditional exceptions to that automatic and internationally accepted copyright.

So if they don't believe in open source licenses, or whatever, "all rights reserved" is logically the default fallback.

That obviously doesn't marry with what you said. China is famously awful at upholding IP laws they're party to, but I think that's all this is here. It's still against the law there, but nobody cares if it's not hurting China.

<comment><USER17> Once enough chinese companies rely on IP laws to protect their assets things will change. It's like how the U.S. book publishing industry played fast and loose with copyright as long as the books were british but pushed for stronger copyright once there were enough american authors.

<comment><USER18> I've been encountering that claim for 20 years. In that time, the Chinese software ecosystem has grown more than any other in the world and might even be larger than that of any other country at this point.

How many companies relying on IP laws is "enough" for foreign IP to be taken seriously?

<comment><USER19> Those companies don't rely on international IP laws so much as laws inside China. When you start seeing Chinese companies actually competing via tenders that's when they'll start caring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think I regret making Papa Parse[1] open source under the MIT license, anyway. Turns out it became incredibly popular and I missed a lot of opportunities to make a profit on the side. But it is used by government agencies around the world, and non-profit organizations like the UN and Wikimedia, so at least it's doing some good. But I know quite a few large businesses are using it at the core of their products... for free. Oh well. It was fun to build.

[1] [http://papaparse.com](http://papaparse.com)

<comment><USER21> I understand your feeling, but I used it in a startup I work for. As I was responsible for this feature (customers uploading their csv files), with PP I did this task in half a day when it could have took me a few days. I told this to my boss and I asked him to donate to PP from the company, but I never heard about it again, so I will ask him again on Monday.

Thanks again for this library.

<comment><USER20> See, I love hearing stuff like this (but also am sad for the realities of donations from companies). Thanks for your comment!

<comment><USER22> Donations from companies are notoriously difficult to push through for any but the smallest/newest companies. Any more established ones tend to have rules and bureaucracy built up around the process of making donations (if they do at all), and individuals within usually have little direct influence.

Paying license fees for tools or software, on the other hand, is commonplace enough that small amounts are usually at a manager's discretion with little oversight. Offering to send an invoice for a 'license' that doesn't offer any additional benefits may be a way to simplify things for companies like this that want to pay to support the open source they use.

<comment><USER23> I second this: Open-source projects, please send invoices so companies can bury them in their accounting. Even postgresql.org let me down with a "the only invoice is the CC receipt from paypal", which triggered a specific discussion with my accountant about the legal limits of donations (France).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The opposite. In my country it's really hard to get any ownership of your content if you are an employee. For instance you work as secretary for a bodyguard company and in your private time lead a pop-rock band. It's not impossible that your boss can grab a share of your music earnings.

In this regard open-source is really helpful, because it enables me to write code in one gig that is good enough to earn my pay there, but allows me in a legal way to use the same code in my next gig. Instead of giving my boss monopoly over my long-term viable content, I make it free to everybody and therefore useful to my future self.

I would even argue it's good for the boss too, since this way I am more motivated to produce, and 90% of the code used in production is totally useless once the author is gone, since most developers aren't good enough to reuse preexisting code and will instead start writing their own code from scratch.

<comment><USER24> > For instance you work as secretary for a bodyguard company and in your > private time lead a pop-rock band. It's not impossible that your boss can > grab a share of your music earnings.

What country is this? I can't imagine such a scenario outside of a serfdom.

<comment><USER25> In the US, it's possible for your employer to own your ideas:

[http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/](http://www.salon.com/2004/08/18/evan_brown/)

Follow-up:

[https://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown](https://everything2.com/title/The+Thoughts+of+Evan+Brown)

Solution: never disclose anything to your employer unless absolutely required. If you have a new idea, keep it quiet until you quit your job.

FTA:

 _(After 5 1 /2 years of litigation, Judge Curt B. Henderson of Collin County, Texas' 219th District Court ruled in favor of Alcatel, and Brown was obliged to fully disclose the idea to Alcatel and only Alcatel, and to repay in full Alcatel's legal fees of more than $330,000, which according to Brown forced him to sell his house and other assets._

 _During the court case, Brown argued that since his idea had never been committed to paper or physically manifested in any way, there were no grounds for the company to claim ownership of his very thoughts, and he drew comparisons to the fact that an invention cannot be copyrighted or patented until it is transferred from an idea onto paper._

He didn't handle his case well, which torpedoed it. But in parts of the US, yes... anything you do during the course of your employment is owned by the employer.

As a contractor, I've been asked to sign contracts with similar clauses. Uh... no. I have other customers, and you don't own what _they_ pay me to do. Their typical counter is "But this is a standard clause".

Telling them to "no contract" is usually the only option. They just can't understand why an entirely one-sided contract isn't good for _me_.

<comment><USER24> I agree with what you are saying, particularly about 1) Evan Brown making his own case weak, and 2) not signing such contracts where it is bad for your business. The articles were valuable - thanks!

This is different, though, from the case where you are employed as a secretary for a bodyguard company and then work as a musician outside of your regular employment, isn't it?

I mean, suppose Adele was the secretary and then started her musical career during that time. Would the bodyguard company be entitled to royalties from her catalog? I don't think so, and I don't think this case says they would either.

<comment><USER25> > This is different, though, from the case where you are employed as a > secretary for a bodyguard company and then work as a musician outside of > your regular employment, isn't it?

Not really. If the contract states they own _everything_ you do while you're employed by them, they really do own everything.

As for Adele, she's British. Such clauses are generally null and void in the English Common Law system. Your employer owns what they pay you do to, and what you create using employer tools. But if you work as a computer programmer, and invent a better mousetrap at home, your employer can't claim ownership of the mousetrap.

<comment><USER24> Are you saying if it were Madonna instead of Adele, then some bodyguard company owner could be retired in Costa Rica on his earnings from "Papa Don't Preach" if Madonna had signed such a contract when she started working there as a secretary? Is it contractual only? (OP seemed to indicate that it was any employment, so I'm still wondering what country this might be.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> While I don't regret it, last experiences with open source probably made me to not do it again. Essentially people seemed to assume that if I release a project, it also means that I'm require to provide free support for it, etc. The attitude from users of the software was depressing - in fact to me it feels that my paying customers are nicer on average.

<comment><USER27> Pretty sad comment.. I though the vast majority of open-source users were devs...

<comment><USER28> At first most of your users tend to be fairly advanced. After all, they've even managed to somehow find the obscure thing you've made. This is the most rewarding time for an open source project as many of the issues are real and the quality of bug reports and feedback is extremely high. Over time, as the project gains popularity, many of these issues will either have been solved, or have become easily googlable. Therefore you'll rarely hear from the advanced, intelligent portion of your users, although it's also certainly possible that they've already moved on to shinier things.

In the end, you tend to have a noticeable, vocal portion of users whom I'd generously call "social developers," who are bad at figuring things out by themselves and/or prefer asking things from another person to save a few minutes of their own time. Many of these users are very draining to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Definitely: the software for running World of Warcraft private servers, also known as MaNGOS.

Founded and released that in 2005, got so much trouble because of that and wasted loads of cash to keep up project through numerous DDoS attacks, hacks (one of them even causing github downtime in 2013).

oh well. Next :-)

<comment><USER30> I had no idea it was so taxing, but I do want to let you know that MaNGOS is probably what set me on a path of learning programming (which has become my career) so I am indebted to you.

<comment><USER29> Always nice to hear it had some of the intended effects. The - albeit ideal - project goal always was to inspire people to learn development and engage with more complex issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I released an open-source universal cryptocurrency banking website in 2013 called "Safewallet". It has decent google ranking for SEO terms related to open-source crypto banking.

Every time the price of Bitcoin goes up I start getting emails from wantrepreneurs asking me to essentially work for them without pay because they "have a great idea" and "just need a little help getting the software working". During Bitcoin mania phases ( like now ) I'll get 2-3 of these emails a month.

Too many stories to list. Everything ranging from offers of $2,000 to build a "BitStamp clone" or the time I was suppose to be having a sales call with the CEO and instead was greeted by their lead engineer with an endless list of questions on how they could build their own cryptocurrency bank. CEO got real nasty when I politely informed him they would have to pay me for my expert advice.

They all want something for nothing and get an attitude when I tell them I'm not going to build them their own cryptocurrency bank for free or for minimal pay.

Regret spending so much time on something which has only brought me grief.

see: [https://github.com/bigcompany/safewallet](https://github.com/bigcompany/safewallet)

<comment><USER32> There is something wrong with your domain or someone is trying to mess with you. I see this when I opened the site

safewallet.org Please update your contact information

<comment><USER31> I gave up on the project and let the domain lapse. Turns out I'm not very interested in running a bank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I can't get into details, but I worked at a place that was thinking about opening up some development for open source publishing. Another team was working on some very high-end algorithmic work in a specialized field and the company was pumping lots of money into internal R&D for that group. They were selected as an open source test case.

They pushed up their code to github and within a few months a group of them had left the company to form a boot-strapped competitor using their same code -- essentially using the open source publication of their tools as a way to legally ex-filtrate corporate IP -- a nightmare scenario for many companies (and also recently in the news i.e. Uber v Waymo).

This one act burned all open source publishing plans to the ground and now that company open sources as little software as possible. Now, several years later, they haven't published a single line of open source code that I'm aware of.

<comment><USER34> One reason why a GPL licence can be a good idea for businesses -- and BSD/MIT a good idea for employees.

<comment><USER35> But GPL is bad mmkay, Apple told me so.

Seriously, I'm not surprised people haven't thought to take advantage of this aspect of GPL for their own selfish benefit. It's only when you're someone like Apple where BSD or MIT or any of the "permissive" licenses make sense for you, that or you really want to be self-less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I made an open source lib for Cordova (eventually ported to React Native and others). I found I'd gained a number of users with few contributing back, so I forked my own project, closed the source into compiled and encrypted binaries. Now I sell licenses and support, generating ~$20k/month. Innovation has skyrocketed since I've been able to dedicate 100% of my time to the products for the last 2.5 years.

<comment><USER37> How do you think it would have been if you stayed with the open project, and just sold support?

<comment><USER36> Well, what I tell customers is "what you're paying for _is_ support and latest updates.

Customers get access to a private repo for latest updates and priority support for 1 year (yearly maintenance fee = $150/year). ~20% of customers pay the yearly.

Each purchased key is bound to a mobile app id. If customer wants to make 3 apps, they need to purchase 3 keys.

Public repo contains latest stable release; purchased keys unlock product in public repo forever.

iOS lib is free. Only Android lib requires a key to unlock it. This gives users the chance to freely develop iOS first (and hopefully get hooked, like cheap crack ;). Chances are they're going to release an Android version too since most of the earth uses Android.

The Android version is fully operational in DEBUG builds. Key is enforced for RELEASE builds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I maintain a mildly popular JS library on Github. I learned early on to be upfront that helping people with integrations costs me time.

I get a handful of emails each day requesting assistance. I direct them to the README, Stackoverflow and this page: [https://github.com/nathancahill/Split.js/wiki/Split.js- Suppo...](https://github.com/nathancahill/Split.js/wiki/Split.js-Support)

This has worked out well, I've made money off of serious users and avoided a lot of painful back and forth with people who don't want to share code.

</comment><comment><USER39> Lot of comments indicate that the code authors regret making their code open source because somebody rebranded their code or sold it and made money.

You always had a choice to stop development in the early stages and: 1) Make it proprietary - Why didn't you do it? 2) Have a commercial version - <USER2> didn't you do it? 3) Change the license from MIT/Apache/etc - Why didn't you do it? 4) Charge for features/support/maintenance/etc - Why didn't you do it?

When you use certain OS licenses, you give the permission to its user to do whatever they wish including selling it and therefore, complaining about it later doesn't make any sense.

Mattermost for example, was APL. Then they changed it to AGPL because they experienced something similar.

Gitea was born out of the frustration that the original code was not maintained properly.

There are numerous examples like this.

So stop complaining and take action else embrace open source with all your heart.

When we call software "free," we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of "free speech," not "free beer." These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity—that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general. \- Richard Stallman

</comment><comment><USER40> I regret not making a good deal of software open source. But it's a tough decision depending on your market.

One of the niches I specialized in was essentially taken over by an influx of offshore resources. It's like going into bizzaro world when you go to a meeting on a project and someone else is using your own powerpoint presentation and is doing it wrong. It's offensive when you go through project documentation and see that someone else has gotten paid for documents that you wrote for another customer - especially when they are not current.

When I began experiencing this kind of thing, I felt confident in my decision _not_ to open source software.

But the reality is that my biggest source of pride was given to the world at large. And all these years later I would appreciate having a lot of code which I no longer own in my portfolio. And while there are those who would have poached and pillaged my work, my income would have been minimally affected (or maybe not at all). The fact is that when I operated in that niche, the money I earned was all due to the fact that I was good, not because of any particular piece of software. Having a public portfolio of related software might have even brought in more business.

</comment><comment><USER41> Yes. I did horrible things at the start of clj-time in my fork. I was so disgusted with my solution I abandoned it.

Those decisions got propagated and didn't get fixed for a long time. I should have kept it closed and let someone else do it properly, rather than unless abandonware on the world.

In fact, come to think of it, I regret everything I've ever open sourced. I can't think of even one time it lead to a positive outcome. I can't think of even one time it didn't lead to a decidedly negative outcome.

The same is true of my writing. Every time I've wrote about the advancements of programming, people have made it their goal to oppose it and mock me over it.

Lots of people love to talk about how great this community is. But I've never seen our world as much more than a slowly spreading cloud of venom in a larger medium of confusion. I've felt this way ever since the days when I was a kid and the title "hacker" was rigorously gatekept in local and isolated oligarchies.

<comment><USER42> That was very pessimistic, but I can see some truth in it.

<comment><USER41> I don't understand why you'd find it "pessimistic."

Would it be more "optimistic" to ignore all the bad things this community has done with and to me? That's not a thing I'm capable of doing.

I do the work because I love it. The community hasn't welcomed me in any non- barbed way since the early 90s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> One pattern I have seen a few times is that a company develops some important internal piece of software and then later the opens the source code (normally motivated by the notion that other people will contribute to it - which they rarely do).

What normally happens next that the company loses control of this software which they probably didn't realise was so important to their core business as the employees who worked on it are empowered move to other companies and develop private forks or start up as a micro-ISV/contractor business based around providing private forks of the software to clients.

I think what people don't realise is that most of the legal structure around open source software is for software used by end-users. For internal software the GPL doesn't function in the same way: other organisations are more than able to keep private forks and realise all the benefit of the software without contributing back.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm encountering difficulties right now with a project I open-sourced. Some other people made it a core part of their business, but then I left the company, so I can't merge patches to the official branch. And to be honest I don't have the time to do this (I work for another growing startup).

But it's _still_ it's one of the best things I have ever done in computing. It was fun, and I got paid to do a kind of pure research, and enhance my own reputation while doing it. My former employer got free patches from very big and talented companies. I've made some interesting connections through this, that's for sure.

</comment><comment><USER45> I have regretted using the GPL, twice.

First time I made a project I wrote myself (a CP solver called Minion) GPL. I now know several companies had interest in it but we're afraid to put any GPL in their toolchain. I've never received useful external contributions, so I may as well have used BSD.

The second is a project I work on where GPL V2 was chosen. Now some committers have passed away so we are stuck on 2, so can't link with other, GPL v3-only code

<comment><USER46> You didn't use the "GPLv2 or later" clause?

<comment><USER47> The Linux kernel is the most well known codebase that is specifically GPL-2-only. I wouldn't be surprised if there were other 2-only codebases made by people familiar with kernel development, either because they were influenced by the kernel's choice or because they wanted to be able to use code from the kernel. QEMU is in the latter boat -- we have code that was copied from the kernel, so effectively we're GPL-2-only despite having a fair amount of 2-or-later or BSD or other licensed source too. This is awkward because we'd really like to be able to use the binutils disassemblers, but we're stuck on the versions from the last GPL-2 binutils release...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Nooo. Open source was always something I really believed in. I don't have projects which are used by the masses, but the random thanks by a stranger when he finds something I made and open sourced[1] as useful is priceless. But that's just me.

[1]: [https://github.com/tasdikrahman/](https://github.com/tasdikrahman/)

</comment><comment><USER49> As a whole, I'm much more happy that I did than if I hadn't.

Over the past 13 years, I've been developing console emulators for 12 systems and counting. If my work were closed source, I would not have received patches and contributions from 30+ people and counting. And I wouldn't have met several amazing people who ended up becoming very good friends for a very long time. One in particular has been amazing in helping me open up and be less guarded all the time.

I was also able to sell one complete commercial license, and received a partial payment for a license from another company that then vanished (I tried to refund the latter, but e-mails to them no longer work.) I've received a very large number of donations over the years. Should be around $5000 in license sales, $7500 in donations, and another $2500 to fundraise hiring a person to decap chips and extract program code from them for improving emulation. I've also had multiple people make very specialized custom hardware that has helped me out more than words can express. I've had people trust me and lend me thousands of dollars worth of rare games for the purpose of verifying information for emulation and then returning them.

But I would be lying if I said it was all good. At the time of writing, I am aware of _eighteen_ forks of my emulator. Two of these projects in particular never talk to me or submit upstream fixes, and instead commit changes to their own repository with extremely derogatory remarks about me and my programming skills. Two of these intentionally undermine and sabotage the entire goal of what I've been working on from day one (namely, adding known-incorrect hacks to speed up emulation. My distaste for hacks was the whole reason I got involved with emulation in the first place.)

Most of the forks of my software are from versions I released either three and a half years ago, or six years ago. A small number of them are quite popular, meaning my work may as well have been discontinued for those users.

One fork collects over $2,000 a month on Patreon off the backs of others' emulator cores including mine -- even ones that are explicitly non-commercial. One developer just wantonly ignored my GPL license and sells my emulator on Steam, doesn't provide any attribution or credit for using my work, and plays games when people try and get the source code to said work (but to be fair, one person did obtain it.) That one was made particularly worse because he wasted a good 20+ hours of my time over the span of six months promising repeatedly to license my emulator, only to back away at the last minute and pull this without even telling me.

I've had people very blatantly read through my source code to improve their emulators and documentation, and not just avoid giving me credit, but outright deny having ever looked at my code. In the most egregious case, someone copied a set of opcode mnemonics from a CPU core. Only ... that CPU core was never publicly documented: I made up every single mnemonic myself, and the only place those mnemonics existed were in my source code.

I've ended up with two people who have harassed and impersonated me online for six and eleven years respectively now, for reasons I really can't comprehend. I've had half the main staff of the most popular emulator out there make a passtime of digging through my 400K-line codebase, looking for individual lines that were poorly written to mock completely out of context in a public chat area -- and they're people I still have to work with often.

But what I always remind myself is, it's easier to dwell on the negatives. It's possible I could have made a lot more money with commercial licensing sales if my work were closed source. But my software is vastly better than it would be without all the help I've received over the years due to being open source. And I benefited a lot from other open source emulators, so it would be pretty selfish to not return the favor to others. There's no sense in me trying to force people to use my version of my software. I'd rather have a smaller number of users who actually fully appreciate what I'm going for. And I have a pretty thick skin at this point for the rest of it.

That said, do put as much thought as you can into this before releasing as open source. Once you do so, you can _never_ go back. Even if you try, your work will be forked at the last open source release. But speaking for myself, if I could go back and do it all again, I would still keep everything open source.

<comment><USER50> If you don't mind me asking, are you still working full time along with developing the emulators? Have you ever run into any legal trouble with making them?

<comment><USER49> I am still working on them all, yes.

No legal trouble so far. I don't use any information that isn't publicly available (although let's be honest, no one can truly say that all public documentation was created clean room; and emudevs can't know without having seen the original or being informed of this), and I also don't include any copyrighted code. Only very small boot IPLROMs that qualify for fair use (ineligibility for copyright) under Lexmark v SCC.

The real kicker is the Game Boy Advance. It requires a 16KiB BIOS to boot. Any attempts at a high level emulation or a recreation of the ARM assembly code will result in inaccurate emulation, which is a bridge I won't cross. Games can literally read the whole BIOS out (unofficially, but it's possible.) Thus, games can even go as far as to compare every byte of the BIOS. Without the BIOS, the detection of an emulator is an absolutely trivial matter.

I suspect it would be safe to include it, but will not risk it after Sony v Connectix -- easily the worst court precedent in the history of emulation. A judge who had absolutely no understanding of technical matters with regards to emulation and how his ruling created a perfect end-run against the possibility of ever producing a perfect, legal, free emulator.

I'm also hamstrung on the coprocessor firmware included within many game cartridges. Titles using such things won't boot in higan like they will in emulators that use HLE, thus making my emulator more difficult to use than everyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I made a Delphi component once. It was immediately modified in ways I disagreed with, renamed, and spread by someone else.

The person who did this didn't even have a conversation with me about it before doing so.

This was before GitHub and forking and such, but it made me feel angry and unappreciated.

The code that went around was almost entirely my work.

I'm still bitter 25 years later and I've never contributed to Open Sores again.

<comment><USER52> It always seems to be the older generation that has this crappy immature attitude. I'm glad I have to work with less and less people like you.

<comment><USER32> > crappy immature attitude.

Wow the guy the released his code for free which was used by others without giving him any credits and he is the one with crappy immature attitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> As a business owner, it's much easier for me to have an invoice (for the books) than explaining why I sent money through PayPal. Nothing is impossible, but it's more of a hassle for me to donate.

We recently started to go through our commercial projects in a structured way and setup a small budget for OSS donations / support. Please setup some easy way to just give a receipt for support or anything else I can document. Purchase via CC is okay but I need receipts. :)

Thanks to all creators in here that let's me keep a much higher development pace.

</comment><comment><USER54> One use case that's often regrettable is software targeted at non-tech people. I made a free plug in for a shopping cart platform. Lots of happy users, but the occasional person ranting about how it doesn't work for them, and is expecting free troubleshooting and bug fixes on their schedule. A couple spinning into insults and swearing when the answer is "sorry, but I'm unable to help, maybe try a similar plugin from someone else".

<comment><USER55> I had a similar experience when I released an open source real estate search plugin for Wordpress years ago. It gained traction and was covered by a few very prominent real estate blogs/news sites which resulted in over 10,000 downloads in 2 weeks.

There were some people who were not able to get it to work with their theme, shared hosting environment, other plugin conflicts, etc. and expected me to install/troubleshoot. I was spending almost my entire day trying to help people and I couldn't handle the demand especially with that many downloads in such a short period of time.

So I decided to put up paid support versions ranging from $50 to $150. People flipped out when I did that and literally attacked me in comment threads. I tried explaining the time commitment this entailed and that it was taking me away from my core business but the mob didn't care. They were mad that I wasn't willing to install or troubleshoot their environment for free.

I ended up taking the plugin down and since then (it's been 7 years) I haven't open sourced anything major and will probably never release a Wordpress plugin to the public again.

In hindsight, I probably could have made decent money from that plugin if I charged for it initially. It probably would not have gained as much traction or popularity but I think the outcome would have been very different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I have regretted my choice of licences, so now I only go copyleft. That has allowed me to monetize some small libraries with a pretty specific use case. Some companies wont use code they haven't got an invoice for.

</comment><comment><USER57> i originally open-sourced some interesting algorithms built atop a lib i also open-sourced and realized later when building SaaS that it was unwise to have them open, so i force-pushed a commit that removed them from the repo after seeing that all public forks were out of date and did not have them yet.

it helped that the lib never got popular so it was easy to do. there could still be some fork/clone somewhere that has them though :)

</comment><comment><USER42> I regret publishing some ideas I had as an open source project. Once it got other people's attention I had so much work trying to document, answer issues and maintain the project that in the end I got tired of it all and had to stop. I really loved the project, but open source is a lot of work, and most of it is not development, but choosing who to give attention, trust, etc, you must be prepared for that. If I kept it for myself I would probably still be working on it and would be using it in my work related projects.

</comment><comment><USER58> I haven't regretted making anything open source.

I do agree with the sentiment expressed here several times. Once my open source project gets popular it seems that there is a flood of incoming bug fix / feature requests and it is quite overwhelming.

People expect you to just work on the open source library almost as it were your full time job (without a compensation). So that can be frustrating.

This problem can be solved by finding skilled contributors who would be willing to work with you on maintaining the project but this can be quite difficult.

Let's say your project is just reasonably popular (1-2 thousand stars on Github), you will be hard pressed to find willing contributors. It's much easier once the project gets very popular (5k stars I guess).

It also depends on the language and niche of the library. Might be easier to find contributors in certain languages than others.

Having said all that, my open source projects have actually paid me back in a way of interesting work opportunities that I wouldn't otherwise stumble upon. And it's a nice to have some reasonably well received open source project on your CV.

Finally, I would like to shamelessly plug my project: [https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery](https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery)

Core contributors / maintainers always welcome!

</comment><comment><USER59> I made a static blog generator based on github ([https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog](https://github.com/geekodour/gitpushblog)) I thought people will like it, It seems I wasted about 1month making that in my free time. I even wrote a funny blogpost about it in a blog generated by that generator ( [https://geekodour.github.io/posts/dont-waste-your-time- makin...](https://geekodour.github.io/posts/dont-waste-your-time-making-your- own-open-source-project) )

<comment><USER60> Are you sad because your open-source project didn't get traction?

That happens all the time with most people, I guess. Someday it may attract some people, but it is not a "fair" game. Chance matters a lot.

I have at least 10 libraries on GitHub that I think should have gained some visibility, but didn't. There are thousands of similar cases.

I suggest that you keep the idea machine on and keep building stuff.

<comment><USER61> Visibility is the easiest part, when you need it - just advertise and do PR, no reason to rely on a pure chance. Open source projects are often accepted by a lot of places, that do not allow ads for commercial products and services. But then you are going to have the same problem as others pointed out - <USER3> free work. So unless you find a way to make your work on this project sustainable there is little point in gaining visibility.

<comment><USER60> You can only say that after you've had visibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> A small group of maintainers and me (also oss maintainer) are working on solving oss funding issues. This is not a startup or a pitch. If youd like to join the conversation drop me a line at pryelluw[at]gmail

</comment><comment><USER63> I don't know if it counts, but I have decided on not publishing a project I worked on (sporadically) for 14 months either as a binary or as open-source code because of previous experience with a fairly popular open-source software I published a few years ago.

People expect you to work full-time on your project and get angry when you don't fix bugs. I have enough stress at work, where I'm paid to do things.

That hasn't stopped me from making things open-source though, I still enjoy it, and it has caused me to contribute more to other projects.

</comment><comment><USER64> Copycats ! I've released a small library to display cross-platform dialogs (because I couldn't find what I needed) and 2 weeks later a copy cat released a similar Library/API but based on a different approach. In the next years, at least 2 other competing projects joined the party. Mine is tiny file dialogs.

</comment><comment><USER65> Not yet. Things we sponsor we always open source. They've always gone further than we ever hoped.

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm glad I did it, but it was definitely more work than I was expecting.

</comment><comment><USER67> Obviously, anyone who made anything popular and permissively-licensed has undergone such regret when corporations scooped it up and used it gratis without contributing anything back.

Lesson: if you use a permissive license, you are acknowledging that your work is worth nothing to you. Because that's what you'll get for it; whereas it may easily be worthwhile to sell a proprietary-licensed binary of your copylefted work.

</comment><comment><USER68> Not me and not OS but Pieter Levels said he regretted offering an API for Nomad List [1].

[1]: [https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/861259743603470336](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/861259743603470336)

<comment><USER69> That's not opensourcing something, but giving a service for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I think the difference between Foss and "open source" should be noted in questions like this.

Open source != foss

</comment><comment><USER71> Any particular reason you'd expect someone to regret it?

</comment><comment><USER72> Never.

</comment><comment><USER73> Yes</comment>


The whole eclipse in 1 minute in 5K resolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLHTk69nC4 <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, Florin! This is great! Very clear!

Though it's a little disappointing that totality goes by so quickly. I guess you only shot in time-lapse, so you don't have the intermediate frames?</comment>


Ditch Jira and over-management, focus on your goals - <AUTHOR> https://www.frenl.com/interview/ditch-jira-and-over-management-focus-on-your-goals <comment><USER2> Thank you Fabien! @all I'm Balach, the founder of epek.app and happy to talk if you got questions, thoughts, feelings, or feedback! :)</comment>


Ask HN: Local politics and the speed of light – forwarding an innovative agenda? - <AUTHOR>

Long-time reader, 1st-time poster
I am not a physicist - but I was watching a local news channel and heard a politician (Sen. Chuck Schumer) claim that green laser beams travel faster than [red] ones. All else being equal, the speed of light is the speed of light.
This was part of a segment outlining an initiative to reduce the number of incidents with lasers and aircraft. I understand that this is serious, and that there are more incidents involving green lasers than other colors - but what is the real problem, and how is vilifying green lasers an appropriate response to the underlying issue?
Links in comments.
I thought back to an adolescent me: exploring technology and gadgets - and how taking tools and toys out of young mind stifles thought and growth… At what point do we stop restricting products based upon their potential uses? Especially in a land where gun ownership is a God given right.
The thought transitioned to regulatory and political environments (specifically American - although not specifically an American problem) and how disconnected it is from technology and innovation - and in this case: basic scientific fact. It seems to me, if you are trying to keep powerful lasers out of the hands of pranksters, then regulate the power - not the color.
This disconnect extends in the arena of digital money (bitcoin), and host of digital services (Netflix, Airbnb, Uber etc). The Fed wants same day settlement and lower friction transactions - but we continue to both balk on a concise digital money strategy and disparage digital currency adoption . "The world of bit bumping up against the world of atoms" (T Kalanick) - the friction is caused by the agile and innovative digital world colliding with the real world and our laws and regulations.
Are incumbent enterprises and politicians disconnected to a point beyond hope?
How do we best forward an innovative agenda inside organizations and states on a political level? <comment><AUTHOR> Video Clip of news report (sorry for the quality): [http://youtu.be/MAwzFvdbFcU](http://youtu.be/MAwzFvdbFcU)

Full story from NY1: [http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all- boroughs/news/2015/03/15/schumer-...](http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all- boroughs/news/2015/03/15/schumer-calls-for-ban-on-high-powered-lasers-.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Schumer is the same idiot for whom all issues involving Anthropogenic Global Warming -- is "Settled Science" \-- Prof. Einstein Call your Publicist immediately</comment>


Nonprofit Startups Are Just Like Their Counterparts - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323829504578270381504454200.html <comment><USER2> I understand the perspective that operations and growth challenges for a nonprofit are generally the same, but there are some pretty huge differences too.

My own organization is a nonprofit startup. Our 501(c)(3) application took four and a half years in review. During that time we had no final status so rule out most foundational support and as a nonprofit there's no equity investment either. Essentially we had to scrape for what help we could find little by little without much to offer in return. Luckily we're in a high- profile space (music) so we could return enough PR while building.

The IRS eventually denied our application for status. It's not uncommon, especially in the open-source space, but luckily we now have a major law firm representing us pro bono, we hold credible domestic nonprofit status (at the state level) and we've build up enough of a reputation. We're still cut off from most grant-making, but we're finding ways to be creative.

My point is that the administration of the organization itself is no trivial matter, and it's especially difficult to carve out a space for yourself as a nonprofit if you don't fit a traditional nonprofit mold. (And innovation in the nonprofit space is vital — both in the models and the regulation. Sadly the latter lags behind.)

Not a complaint at all, but I'd definitely argue that the differences are many. And for nonprofit startups without a 501(c)(3) you're going to face a challenge, even if you're supported by a fiscal sponsor. It's similar waters for sure, but a whole different ocean.

<comment><USER3> > The IRS eventually denied our application for status. It's not uncommon, > especially in the open-source space..

Could you elaborate on that?

<comment><USER2> Sure.

Open source by itself isn't a tax-exempt action, but for many it's an important part of releasing free software for the public benefit. Services for the public benefit that are open to all can generally be framed as tax-exempt activity, but the lawyers at the IRS who review 501(c)(3) applications are tax attorneys, not software/tech specialists so a lot of confusion ensues.

Our review came back arguing that providing open source software is not only non-exempt, but actually provides a competitive advantage in the market because some companies would be paying for the same service, therefore they are at a disadvantage — even though they would have the same access to that free software as anyone.

Talking to other nonprofit directors and experts it seems like the arguments around open source are inconsistent at best. It makes sense because the IRS generally fast-tracks more common arguments and passes off specialty cases (think software) to individual reviewers. As enough case-law builds up they'll provide a more consistent decision based on internal protocols.

Out of the scope of your question, but the end result for us is that we're doing a bunch of legal wrangling, establishing more outreach and education efforts (which were always part of our mission) and getting ready to re-apply by year's end. It's not unrealistic to think a full ten years will pass from the start of the organization to the point where we get 501(c)(3) status.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having worked at a nonprofit startup, I agree from the perspective of an employee.

Since we were nonprofit, it was easier to justify being open source -- which meant anyone could contribute. Imagine being able to fix that pet bug or feature on your favorite site that the developers just don't have time for.

Same perks, salary, types of coworkers, etc. However, you also get the feeling that you're working for a greater good and not just bottom line of your investors.

</comment><comment><USER5> What I am particularly curious about is why people tend to believe that NPOs or charities are "especially different" from other businesses. In many cases, there are entrenched non-profits that share many of the same values as their corporate counterparts. There are non-profits and charities that actively support the restriction of access to research and knowledge, almost as strongly as non-practicing entities in court tend to. I exaggerate, but only slightly. Don't even get me started on Komen (the cancer mafia), OCLC (the library mafia), DFA-- any of those.

Watsi certainly offers something unique to the lineup. I remember reading a while back that Science Exchange was trying to get the National Science Foundation to directly sponsor grant money to pay for scientific services "in real time" (as opposed to giving the grant money to the research organizations, which may be better or worse). It would be interesting to see Watsi make up a similar "philanthropic exchange" API where donors can directly cover thousands of campaigns at a time at their convenience and query constraints. Maybe you could next have charities/organizations bid for a contract to solve a campaign problem (like "[offering a cheap but reliable dialysis machine for] dialysis for John"), this way you would be able to incentivize long-term products and solutions as well, instead of just one-time solutions?

I often hear an argument to the effect of "well, charities don't experience a pressure to optimize as much as private ventures do because their incentives are different". But I am not sure how true that is. Some of them seem to be optimizing for convincing philanthropists to make regular, large donations which is a far cry from what you'd think their core mission would be (like "make healthcare cheaper" or "scan and torrent a billion books"). Maybe you can eat their lunch. GiveWell is trying to help this situation a bit.

<comment><USER6> Non-profits are different in the sense that there are a different set of laws they have to follow, and a core mission that is held to much moreso than in private industry. The laws make non-profits make vastly different decisions than a for-profit would make. Furthermore, non-profits hire people who are passionate about what they work on, which means hiring and culture is different (not based nearly as much on money/payout).

As for a "philanthropic exchange" API, I imagine they are busy just keeping everything running at the moment, let alone trying for something far-sweeping and loosely defined as that.

<comment><USER5> I didn't claim that they were working on an API, and I don't see how you could have read that from what I wrote. Maybe you were skipping ahead.

      > and a core mission that is held to much moreso than in private industry

Is there any law on the books about being held directly responsible to a core mission? e.g. are there organizations that are losing their tax status because they suck at their mission ?

<comment><USER7> There are such laws on the books in at least some U.S. jurisdictions, but it doesn't really cause anybody to lose their tax status because there are legal workarounds. It is very common for a nonprofit organization's Articles of Incorporation (and any other legally-binding statements of purpose) to be written like this:

"This benevolent, charitable and eleemosynary institution has been organized [...under the appropriate state law for a charitable organization...] and shall be operated exclusively for charitable, religious, educational, literary, or scientific purposes within the meaning of §501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1986 as the same may be amended from time to time. Within the foregoing purposes and not by way of limitation, [the organization shall perform its core mission]."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've volunteered at a large scale NPO for a number of years now holding exec positions at national and local boards. The one thing people don't understand about NPO is that non-profit doesn't mean no profit. The real difference is where the income comes from, where it goes, and how it's taxed. That's more or less it. The lash out from those who do not understand this point when you're trying to create a successful business without having to exploit sweat equity is completely frustrating.

<comment><USER5> I think GiveWell could accelerate their plans the best if they would try to make your point extremely well heard. Someone must have done a really brilliant marketing campaign somewhere along the line to convince everyone of that ideal philanthropic image of a NPO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I must wonder, pg, if this is one of the submarine articles like the one you wrote? <http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>

either way, well placed PR for Watsi.

<comment><USER10> No, a submarine article _pretends_ to be about something else (usually a "wider trend"). This is a pretty straightforward article about Watsi, because Watsi is interesting enough all by itself.

<comment><USER9> ah right. thanks for the correction then

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought that some of the discussion in this thread would be better served by drawing attention to an often missed distinction: _nonprofits =/= charities_.

In many countries including the United States, it is perfectly possible to operate a non-profit corporation without registering as a 501(c) charity. You just need to find a revenue stream that doesn't consist of donations for the most part, because only charities can accept tax-deductible donations. For some non-profits, of course, this is a non-starter. For others, it can be very natural. You sell products or offer services like any other company, but you charge fees that cover the cost and not much more. You also structure your corporation so that the people who run it are "members" rather than shareholders and any surplus income is always reinvested. (That's why YC didn't get any equity from Watsi in return for their investment/donation. A non-profit corporation doesn't have the concept of equity to begin with.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Previous (recent) Watsi HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5117385>

I looked for the previous discussion to find out about the exit prospects for this investment. I found out that pg considers his investment and advice to be a charitable contribution: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5117432>

</comment><comment><USER13> I myself am developing a nonprofit startup. Right now it seems like the biggest hurdle will be all the paperwork and compliance work.

It'd be awesome if somebody started some sort of umbrella organization to file the paperwork, deal with the IRS, and maintain a board for "member" charities in exchange for a small cut of donations.

<comment><USER14> Such umbrella organizations exist -- they're called fiscal sponsors (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship>)

I worked at a non-profit fiscally sponsored by the Trust for Conservation Innovation (<http://trustforconservationinnovation.org/>), which is focused on environmental projects and takes 8% of project revenue.

I definitely recommend non-profit startups consider starting with a fiscal sponsor instead of trying to register as an independent 501(c)(3). You can always spin off later if necessary.

<comment><USER15> I considered getting a fiscal sponsorship when I launched my tech-driven nonprofit organization, but I ultimately decided that that was not the best course for us. Getting a fiscal sponsor can save you some paperwork and headache in the beginning, but the biggest drawback (other than that they take anywhere between 7-15% of your revenue) is the issue of control. Technically, your fiscal sponsorship has control of your program, operations, and hiring. While you can find and work with a fairly hands-off fiscal sponsor, if you want full control of your startup organization, then file for the 501(c)3. It's more upfront work, but will save you the headache of spinoff and potential conflicts.

Also, get a pro-bono lawyer or accountant to file for your tax exempt status. Most law firms actively look for nonprofit pro-bono work to do, and you can also look for pro-bono work at law schools. I had an accountant do ours pro- bono, and in the end the actual application did not take that much time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Would love a detailed pg article on what ventures should be nonprofit vs forprofit. If this is a viable model, presumably some startups could go either way. (Open source software?) I think it would help to have more of a community consensus about what belongs - and can thrive - as a nonprofit.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if Watsi will apply the crowdfunding nonprofit model to other sectors besides medical treatments...such as perhaps sponsoring the education of specific children showing great promise, or to micro-loans in a Grameenesque fashion...

<comment><USER6> Why not Kiva for that? I love Watsi, but they are solving a different problem, and the problem you mention, we are already attempting to solve (as are many others).

<comment><USER17> Good call</comment></comment></comment>


H̶a̶l̶f̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶i̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶ 600M unsuspecting FreeBSD users - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TneLO5TdW_M

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't say these are BSD users. If I am a windows user and connect to google's linux servers to search, does that make me a linux user?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I think this title is a bit flippant and I'm sure the 600M+ WhatsApp users don't care what the servers are running.

The important takeway is that FreeBSD and Erlang have worked really well for WhatsApp allowing them to grow their userbase insanely fast while still staying relatively small.</comment></comment>


Mozilla Awards $585k to Nine Open Source Projects - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/08/04/mozilla-awards-585000-to-nine-open-source-projects-in-q2-2016/ <comment><USER2> The actual title is "Mozilla Awards $585,000 to Nine Open Source Projects in Q2 2016", and text says "one additional award – to PyPy, the Python JIT compiler, for $200,000".

The other projects awarded are:

Tor - [https://www.torproject.org/](https://www.torproject.org/) _Tor is a system for using a distributed network to communicate anonymously and without being tracked._

Tails - [https://tails.boum.org/](https://tails.boum.org/) ( _" secure-by- default live operating system that aims at preserving the user's privacy and anonymity. "_)

Caddy - [https://caddyserver.com/](https://caddyserver.com/) _Caddy is an HTTP /2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let's Encrypt_

Mio - [https://github.com/carllerche/mio](https://github.com/carllerche/mio) _Mio is an asynchronous I /O library written in Rust._

Dnssec - [https://www.getdnsapi.net/](https://www.getdnsapi.net/) _This project is standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension for transport of a serialized DNSSEC record set_

Godot Engine - [http://www.godotengine.org/](http://www.godotengine.org/) _Godot is a high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to HTML5._

Pears - [http://pearsearch.org/](http://pearsearch.org/) _PeARS (Peer-to-peer Agent for Reciprocated Search) is a lightweight, distributed web search engine which runs in an individual's browser and indexes the pages they visit in a privacy-respecting way._

Nvda - [http://www.nvaccess.org/](http://www.nvaccess.org/) _NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) is a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows_

Edit: added project descriptions from

[https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla- awards-3850...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2016/06/22/mozilla- awards-385000-to-open-source-projects-as-part-of-moss-mission-partners- program/)

Also, moderators changed the title to the one in the article (original submission mentioned PyPy only).

<comment><USER3> I hate how firefox force users to go to about:config to disable javascript, and to disabble css is more work. The dumb message in about:config, pocket and hello. I don't like any of this /end rant.

Each add-on increases the surface attack area. I only wish a better lynx

Edit: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873709](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=873709)

<comment><USER4> Firefox was never intended a better lynx; hating on Mozilla for that is a bit ridiculous. Have you considered using surf or xombrero?

<comment><USER5> That's technically true, but before it was firefox (before it was Firebird, even), It was intended very much as a stripped-down gecko frontend written in XUL, much closer to Lynx than the firefox we all use today.

Servo is very similar in useability to lynx right now, if grandparent is interested in trying it out.

<comment><USER4> Stripped-down compared to the Mozilla Suite, which came with an email client and HTML editor, but the browser itself was intended to match _and extend_ the Mozilla featureset.

<comment><USER5> this is very much not true. Phoenix was not intended to extend the featureset.

<comment><USER4> From the release notes of Phoenix 0.1:

 _> Not only does Phoenix aim to match the featureset of Mozilla -- subtracting features deemed geeky and better offered as add-ons -- but it extends it. For example, it adds customizable toolbars and quicksearch in bookmarks and history. It will soon offer an add-on manager, a better wallet, and a new downloads sidebar pane._

[http://website- archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_r...](http://website- archive.mozilla.org/www.mozilla.org/firefox_releasenotes/en- US/firefox/releases/0.1.html)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it was really nice when it didn't have the add-on manager yet. just a small, XUL-based browser. Made me switch from Galeon.

Still didn't ever complete the suite, though; Thunderbird tackled email, Sunbird handled contacts. Good thing, too; Seamonkey was a pig on my pentium 133 w/32MB RAM. Played quake fine, but just couldn't handle Seamonkey. Phoenix got me extra life out of my ancient hardware.

<comment><USER6> These days, Xombrero is getting me the same sort of extra life out of my ancient (or otherwise under-powered, e.g. Raspberry Pi) hardware. It's a very light frontend to GTKWebKit with a glorious vi-like UI.

Now I wonder if it would be worth making something similar in XUL...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just some quick numbers:

$585,000 comes out to 0.1778116% (almost two tenths of one percent) of Mozilla's 2015 revenue of $329,000,000.

As an avid Firefox user since 2007, upon learning a few years ago how much revenue Mozilla takes in, I've always wondered where the hundreds of millions of dollars are spent... I was talking with a colleague about Servo, and was saying, "If they spent allocated 5% of that revenue on Servo, they could hire 70 developers year round at $235,000 each to work on Servo full time, year- round."

<comment><USER8> Servo is one of a hundred initiatives that they have. They have been developing the Rust Language itself, and all the tooling around it. They are trying to kill PDF plugins with PDF.js. They are trying to kill closed source video codecs with Dalaa. They have been trying to improve online collaboration, multimedia, 3D, and a zillion other things.

They also help with web standards, documentation, legal battles, and advocacy.

[http://www.mozillalabs.com/en-US/projects/](http://www.mozillalabs.com/en- US/projects/)

<comment><USER9> We also have a web browser with a decent following. That takes a good chunk of engineers to keep up and running.

<comment><USER10> what's it called?

<comment><USER11> Netscape Navigator 2.01

<comment><USER12> Forget it. Stick with Mosaic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >We made one additional award – to PyPy, the Python JIT compiler, for $200,000.

This is great. I sincerely hope the PyPy developers see the light soon and start focusing on Python 3.x support, and that this money can help get it done. Haven't written a Python 2 app for something like 4 years? Python 3 is mature now.

I also sincerely hope that this portends Firefox bundling a Python runtime with the browser, providing a DOM API, and letting sites provide client-side scripts in Python. JavaScript has been allowed to reign for much too long.

<comment><USER14> > I also sincerely hope that this portends Firefox bundling a Python runtime > with the browser, providing a DOM API, and letting sites provide client-side > scripts in Python. JavaScript has been allowed to reign for much too long.

Not going to happen. Web Assembly is the one "alternate runtime" (which isn't really an alternate runtime) that is ever going to exist.

<comment><USER15> 'twould be interesting if one could take a JIT'd or even partially JIT'd python program as input and get WASM out. You could have it be like a http server feature.

<comment><USER16> Someone developed asm.js backend for PyPy, so it's definitely possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish the money would go towards lobbying the government for more direct support for open source projects in the $1 billion range. It still is a great ROI for the feds and other governments.

Companies that use open source software as well as create it should lobby the government for funding open source as well. This would include Google, IBM, Redhat, Microsoft, Facebook....

<comment><USER18> Agreed, and the money would be more fairly distributed.

Many of the open source projects mentioned already have a pretty strong vested financial interest behind them. They are no longer true open source projects.

I think it's natural for popular open source projects to eventually turn into businesses but I think there is a point where they really shouldn't be considered 'open source' any more and Mozilla is definitely one of them.

<comment><USER19> If 'open source' isn't about having.... I dunno, all your source-code being licensed under an OSS license... then what exactly is it?

I think the word you're having more of an issue with isn't 'open source', but defining what exactly a 'project' is vs. a business. On that latter point, I would agree with you that a project doesn't seem as much of a 'project' when most of the core people are employed to work on it towards specific goals the funders have designated.

<comment><USER20> That's how most projects work. This one just isn't a hobby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm all for them donating money for FOSS projects, but I had the impression that Mozilla doesn't make the most amount of money, being a non-profit and all. Can someone who knows more comment on this?

<comment><USER22> In the United States, a non-profit does not earn money for owners or investors. NP's do make money via donations and services provided. While many NP's make very little money or mostly distribute donated funds, other NP's can make large amounts of money. Money retained in excess of expenses, must be used to further a NP's mission.

A NP Hospital uses its excess funds to provide free services to those who cannot afford healthcare and does community outreach and eduction.

Mozilla uses its money to supports other OSS projects, advocates for OSS.

(This is a very simple explanation with many details of how NP's operate ignored, or the various legal types of NP's.)

<comment><USER23> So is this just Mozilla being forced to make donations?

<comment><USER24> They could have hired more developers, returned the money to doners, increase the salary of their employees and what not. The only thing they can not do is give the money as dividend to the owners the way for-profit companies do all the time.

<comment><USER25> I am sure if they had chosen the second option the heirs of Hacı İskender would be very happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the first time I hear about PeARS project. (Quick search on HN shows nothing relevant.) Its goals look great and ambitious. Wonder why it doesn't get more publicity?

P.S. And they should consider changing the project name.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you are into video games and you haven't tried Godot Engine yet, you should totally do!

<comment><USER28> I must second this. Godot is… well, it's hard to believe it's actually a free and open-source project. It's a cross-platform 3D and 2D game engine with a fully integrated development environment (including a friendly visual editor for 3D and 2D scene graphs) and its own custom scripting language. Akin to Unity 3D in the proprietary world.

I decided to try it out this week to make a (3D!) game, and I've been consistently surprised by how pleasant an experience it has been. The community's been helpful when I've had problems, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How does Mozilla use PyPy today? On web servers or the Firefox build tools?

<comment><USER30> The Push Server [0] and ap-loadtester [1] both use PyPy. I believe it's in use elsewhere as well but that's what I could dig up quickly.

[0] [https://github.com/mozilla-services/autopush](https://github.com/mozilla- services/autopush)

[1] [https://github.com/mozilla-services/ap- loadtester](https://github.com/mozilla-services/ap-loadtester)

<comment><USER29> Interesting. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Huh. I've been donating to Mozilla via Amazon Smile, but it seems like they've got cash to spare. Maybe I should switch to the EFF.

<comment><USER32> Cash to spare? That's like saying "oh this shop gives people discounts, I guess they have cash to spare" and then shop elsewhere out of spite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> alt [https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eu- fossa/og_page/imple...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/eu- fossa/og_page/implementation)

</comment><comment><USER34> Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER35> Given their investment in Rust, I really don't get what's the point of this.

<comment><USER36> Maybe PyPy.js could emit WebAssembly in the not-too-distant future?

<comment><USER37> Maybe you want to check out [https://github.com/pybee/batavia](https://github.com/pybee/batavia)

<comment><USER36> > Batavia is an implementation of the Python virtual machine, written in > Javascript.

Interesting, but I'm not sure that's the ideal approach.

It looks like WebAssembly is going to be a much easier lift:

> Hopefully we can get initial support almost-for-free by just asking > emscripten to spit out the new format.

[https://github.com/pypyjs/pypyjs/issues/145#issuecomment-113...](https://github.com/pypyjs/pypyjs/issues/145#issuecomment-113004068)

<comment><USER38> [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you're running an open source software project, we're doing awesome stuff with makers/inventors/developers over on Baqqer[0]. We want to help grow and foster more open creation and community building by building a healthy and supportive ecosystem of people sharing, building, selling, and even crowdfunding together.

[0] [https://baqqer.com/](https://baqqer.com/)

and we even dog food the product ourselves [https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer](https://baqqer.com/projects/baqqer)

<comment><USER40> Selling shovels?

<comment><USER39> We're bringing capital, resources, and community to people building the future. It actually started because I was trying to get people on-board when I was building Playa ([http://getplaya.com](http://getplaya.com)) and found my VC friends (even VC strangers [https://medium.com/@sinkorswim/launching-at- launch-my-entire...](https://medium.com/@sinkorswim/launching-at-launch-my- entirely-crazy-week-862d9cacdcd8)) didn't know what I was talking about, but my technical friends did. So I thought it would be cool to build something that might help people building other cool stuff that might not have/desire the need for traditional funding, and also provides all the tools (newsletters, updates, engagement, shops, knowledge-share) needed to build a real and viable community of supporters for whatever you're sharing/building/selling/crowdfunding.

I see a lot of founders who don't include community through every step of building product, so they have a hard time with distribution and finding reception of their products at launch. We're getting people to understand that without tons of unicorn money it's essential to build an organic following by including their communities in the feedback loop early and often -- simply building alone is itself not enough. :)</comment></comment></comment>


Linux Font Rendering: Ubuntu vs. Debian vs. OS X vs. Windows - <AUTHOR>

I don't have a blog, so I'm afraid my review/question will go here.
My question, from the outset as I sit at this debian box, is why is the font rendering so good? This may seem like a strange question until you consider that I've tried most major Linux distributions, and some arcane ones, Mac OS X, and Windows. (I've used Linux and Windows extensively, OS X is still a tinkering platform for me.)
I'm something of a stickler about my "environment". I'm kind of finicky about it, for a programmer (by hobby for the time being, trying to decide if I should go the certification route or go for a degree, which'll be my next post on here).
Anyway, the font rendering on Ubuntu in my experience has been mostly bad. It wasn't outright horrible, because I've definitely used some Linux distros (especially in the old days, CHRIST) that had font rendering that made my eyes bleed. Those were the days I stayed in my damn terminal.
Mac OS X's font rendering is intriguing, in that they are super-aggressive across the whole platform in anti-aliasing. While I appreciate the effect they are trying to accomplish, I think cranking the AA to 11 was a little much, and sacrifices too much font rendering accuracy. Not to mention it annoyed the hell out of anyone who used Safari on Windows. (I don't think porting OS X font rendering to safari for windows was the best choice, as much as I may prefer it to IE. It has gotten bad reviews amongst my fellow typographically finicky users.)
Windows font rendering is what it is. On a decent resolution LCD or CRT, the zero-AA fonts are tolerable and functional, enough so that Windows is my 2/3's of the time OS. With AA turned on, I find XP's font rendering to be a bit thick and on the side of ugly. Kind of like that girl who seems a bit too fat for your taste, but seems to have potential for looking much better with a little TLC.
Then there's Debian. I just installed etch and the default user environment (netinst) on my Powermac G4 (I got it for 30 bucks. Whaddya want?) and the default font rendering is...IMHO, gorgeous. The AA is light but soft (not like a drag queen like Mac OS X), and it's the first time I've ever believed the font rendering in Open Office to not be utterly horrible. (Admittedly a different default font was used in OO.o as compared to Win32/Ubuntu, but I've used the font before and it didn't look this good.) (The debian install was vanilla gnome. Not that you'll hear me complain about vanilla gnome.)
Am I seriously facing a situation where the Debian guys have put together an auto-configged X.org that has the best font rendering I've ever seen as compared to the supposedly userspace obsessed Ubuntu/OS X?
Anyway, I'd like comments from any BSD users if they're out there. Does a BSD Ports install of X (or from the CD) autoconfig X? If so, what is the font rendering like?
Any Mac users have any positive/negative feelings regarding the heavy AA on OS X? I find it attractive, it's just...to heavy for me, and I can't really seem to change the AA in any meaningful manner that affects the output significantly.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far. You'll likely hear me shoot my mouth off about my (mis)adventures in Unix/Linux userspace further on as well. <comment><USER2> Regarding OS X rendering, yes it's really juicy but I think I've grown to like it. Default fonts in Fedora/CentOS look alright to me, not terrible enough for me to seek out a solution. Under FreeBSD, I wrestled with font rendering for literally a few days, but I don't remember what I did with my resulting config file. The fonts looked crisp and pretty.

I find more importantly is my xterm command line. Under most systems, the following xterm looks good enough for me to do anything in:

      xterm -bg black -fg white -fa . -fs 13 +sb -geometry 95x24

But any way, I shall also be watching this thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> crikey. either my timing was poor or no one cares about font rendering like I do.

Thanks for the reply and the xterm options. I'll use them on my debian machine.</comment></comment>


Chasing the Data: Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@peter_5662/chasing-the-data-coronavirus-802d8a1c4e9a#0bca-3931d6455367 <comment><USER2> Excellent read, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Most welcome. Latest update: IBM cancelled on RSA Conference due to #Coronanoia.</comment></comment>


Show HN: MusicButler – get notified about new music releases - <AUTHOR> https://www.musicbutler.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, founder here.

Some background: I started learning Python ~3 years ago after several failed attempts giving at learning programming with multiple languages (including Python itself) over the last 10 years. MusicButler isn't my first major project, but it's definitely my biggest, and my first public-facing one. Shipping a product was one of my 2018's new year's resolutions. Admittedly, it took me way too long to "launch".

Th core mission is simple: music services do a very bad job at letting people know when their favorite artists release new music.

The effort needed to get MusicButler (which I still consider "in beta") to where it is today was wildly underestimated. I've learned a ton about data- sanitization, asynchronous tasks, UI, and more.

Happy to get your feedback,

S</comment>


Monitor mode for 802.11 on Android devices - <AUTHOR> http://bcmon.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/working-monitor-mode-on-nexus-one.html

<comment><USER2> Unless I'm mistaken, we had monitor mode working on the G1 (and similar) devices a wee while ago now.</comment>


Nexus S getting ICS in a few weeks, Nexus One never - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8848669/Android-upgrade-for-Google-Nexus-S-in-weeks.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Google is refusing to support a phone that is less than a 2 years old, the 3GS was just upgraded to iOS 5.

This makes me very sad.</comment>


SpaceX demos gesture controlled design for direct 3D printing - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqs_S-zEBY&feature=youtu.be

<comment><USER2> I wonder if they have a library of shortcut gestures built in. Advanced CAD users are often keyboard wizards.</comment>


Note: A New, Simple Encoding for Objects - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/breck7/note

<comment><USER2> Hmm, it looks like a lot of work has been put into simplifying object notation down to it's bare minimum, but the trailing whitespace and array representation both concern me. Significant trailing whitespace, as @cynwoody said, is a really bad approach to the multiline solution. Also, having to number arrays means ordering is a nightmare. Overall, it's a cool approach that needs some work, and could probably benefit from looking at YAML, instead of HAML, for inspiration.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good observations. Thanks for taking a careful look.

We've run into both points in practice over the past year.

See my comments to @cynwoody regarding the whitespace.

For an array, while Note doesn't support an array type, you can extend Note with a higher level language that does.

For example, I could create a higher level language on top of Note that supports types:

      favorite_colors ['blue', 'green', 'red']

Your language could interpret the value of favorite_colors as an array, and so you could access favorite_colors[0], favorite_colors.length, and so forth.

<comment><USER2> No problem. I think the suggestion below, about using empty lines, might be a good approach to pursue. One additional thing to consider about the trailing- whitespace, a lot of (sometimes anal) developers have set up hooks to automatically strip whitespace at the end of a file every time they hit save. To clarify the array, in your suggestion, the favorite_colors would come out as a string, that I would then eval or parse, correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> > One additional thing to consider about the trailing-whitespace, a lot of > (sometimes anal) developers have set up hooks to automatically strip > whitespace at the end of a file every time they hit save.

Strip whitespace at the end of all lines, or at the end of a file? Wouldn't be a problem at the end of files, but at the end of lines might be an issue.

> To clarify the array, in your suggestion, the favorite_colors would come out > as a string, that I would then eval or parse, correct?

Correct. A leaf/value can use any encoding. So you could have something like this:

      function Person (note) {
        this.patch(note)
        if (this.favorite_colors)
         this.favorite_colors = JSON.parse(this.favorite_colors)
      }
      Person.prototype = new Note()

      var joe = new Person('favorite_colors ["blue", "red", "green"]')
      console.log(joe.favorite_colors[0])
      // prints "blue"
      console.log(joe.favorite_colors[2])
      // prints "green"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having indentation inform syntax is a good thing, as demonstrated by the likes of Python and YAML.

But meaningful trailing white space (see the multiline string example)? I don't think so ...

<comment><AUTHOR> That method is optional.

You can also do:

      message This is a
       multiline string. It can
       keep going and going.

I just thought this looked somewhat nicer:

      message
       This is a multiline string.
       It can keep going and going.

However, unless syntax highlighting is present, it can definitely be a source of bugs.

But I understand your concern. It is one of my few nitpicks as well. However, the slight problem almost disappears with editors that support Note.

Thanks for taking a careful look at Note!

<comment><USER4> Have you considered separating multiline strings with a newline above and blow, with multiline strings indented, like so?

      from Alice
      to Bob
      subject Note formatting
      body

       Note is awesome! I like to use it everywhere.
       XML better watch out.
       Whitespace is great.

      return-path firstname.lastname@example.com

Or, in the case where there is no text below, a newline would have the same visual clarity.

      from Alice
      to Bob
      subject Note formatting
      body

       Note is awesome! I like to use it everywhere.
       XML better watch out.
       Whitespace is great.
       Let's get rid of return paths.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I had not. That looks pretty good, and seems like it could work...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to say Youtube in Latin (According to translate.google.com) - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/#auto/en/gloria%20patri%20et%20filio

<comment><AUTHOR> So apparently "Glory Be to the Father" = "Youtube"</comment>


YouTube adds annotations to their videos - <AUTHOR> http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/06/youtube-annotations.html <comment><USER2> Annotations from the creators is nice, but what I want to see is annotations from users. "Create a caption" contests could be brilliant when applied to video.

<comment><USER3> as long as you could turn it off. annotations on flickr can get out of hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Now that I think of it, I've seen at least 4 diff websites that had video annotations and I've never seen even a single video that had annotations that were valuable. They're more annoying than valuable (think ads).

As for flickr... some of them are useful. Facebook's people annotation, for example, is super-useful and it adds a lot of value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I fundamentally don't understand this kind of thing. I've seen it at <http://nicovideo.jp>, where most every video is COVERED with text. Doesn't seem all that useful. Maybe it's a cultural thing?

But then, there are many things I don't understand that make lots of money.</comment>


Abusing HTTP Status Codes to Expose Private Information - mike-cardwell https://secure.grepular.com/Abusing_HTTP_Status_Codes_to_Expose_Private_Information

<comment> mike-cardwell If you get an SSL error when going to that website, it's because your browser/os combination doesn't have the cacert.org root installed. If you still want to access the content, you can either put in a temporary exception or install the cacert root.</comment>


Google's Icecream Sandwich Event Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/channel/radioandroid

<comment><USER2> Use the one at <http://www.youtube.com/android> instead. It's better.

<comment><USER3> How is this better? The OP posted a live stream, the link you've posted here has no such live stream.

<comment><USER4> It was live.</comment></comment></comment>


Four Reasons Why Big Companies Neither Innovate nor Get Disrupted - <AUTHOR> https://www.ideafaktory.com/disruption/ <comment><USER2> Original title is "4 Reasons Big Companies Don't Innovate…or Get Disrupted"

If the HN headline is being edited, it really should be "Four Reasons Why Big Companies Neither Innovate nor Get Disrupted"</comment>


Website has unemployed profs writing students' essays - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/we-make-your-papers-go-away-website-has-unemployed-profs-writing-students-essays <comment><USER2> > It just seems to hinder the academic process. The focus should be on > acquiring skills, not trying to get an easy A.

If the focus really is on acquiring skills, grade onsite tests and participation instead of take-home papers.</comment>


The ATS Programming Language - dan-robertson http://www.ats-lang.org <comment><AUTHOR> If you're looking for more "Why ATS", or where it can be used, I've written a number of blog posts on using features of ATS: [https://bluishcoder.co.nz/tags/ats/index.html](https://bluishcoder.co.nz/tags/ats/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a very fast command-line tool to count lines of source code, written in ATS:

[https://github.com/vmchale/polyglot](https://github.com/vmchale/polyglot)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://youtu.be/zt0OQb1DBko](https://youtu.be/zt0OQb1DBko)

Highly recommended watching this before you dive into ATS

<comment><USER4> "Video unavailable" for me. Anyone else?

<comment><USER5> Same here.

I think it's accidentally truncated, the full video id here: [https://youtu.be/zt0OQb1DBko](https://youtu.be/zt0OQb1DBko)

<comment><USER6> I came here to recommend the same video, "A (Not So Gentle) Introduction To Systems Programming In ATS" by Aditya Siram". There was probably 200-250 in the room for this talk and another 10k viewers of this video, which pretty damn cool. Some of those chuckles from the audience are mine. Thanks Aditya, Strangeloop and Hongwei Xi!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dan-robertson There is an introductory talk from strange loop too: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zt0OQb1DBko](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zt0OQb1DBko)

</comment><comment><USER7> Plus for showing code. But I'm a bit confused. Does ATS have a network library? Or a 2d canvas library ? Does it compile to JS !? I would like to see some more real life examples, maybe some simple games like tic tac toe, or a network chat server/client, or what are you supposed to use the langauge for, besides solving fibonacci ?

<comment><USER8> ATS did beat C++ in the benchmark game. Plus it's a much safer language, with proper contracts and a proper typesystem. It's more comparable to ADA/Spark (just a more C like syntax, not Pascal), than Coq/Agda or any JS based language.

<comment><USER9> Actually, the ATS compiler did beat a couple of specific C++ compilers, to be precise.

<comment><USER10> If it beat g++ and clang++, then it would most likely also beat icc and Visual Studio.

The story that icc generates faster code has been a myth for a long time.

Or is there another compiler that you have in mind?

<comment><USER9> PGI for example.

Many HPC centers happen to believe on the icc myth.

Although my point was not to mix languages with implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I first learned about ATS when it came out on the top (2nd, 3rd?) of the benchmark game. That was years ago. Did it gain any real world traction in the meantime? It seems ATS was removed from the benchmark game since then.

<comment><USER12> Same here.

I was impressed with its speed, but then I found that the reason ATS is so fast was that you basically just write C code in it to get it be fast. It's pointless to benchmark as a language of its own.

<comment><USER13> It has a backend via C and thus GCC, but it enables some things that plain C doesn't due to making certain things easier, plus the ABI for functional programming stuff matches up very cleanly with the hyper-optimized stuff.</comment></comment></comment>


60 photos that change your perception of the past - <AUTHOR> http://news.distractify.com/culture/x-history-photos/

<comment><USER2> I really enjoyed some of these. Anything that really opens your eyes to reality is something special</comment>


Ask HN: Programming languages and Frameworks to learn in 2020 - <AUTHOR> Which languages are worth to devote learning in 2020? and what about the new frameworks? <comment><USER2>
      Rust       - for low-level / systems programming
      Elixir/OTP - for distributed systems, backend, JS-less
      frontend (Phoenix LiveView)
      Elm        - for SPAs (Single Page Apps)
      Julia      - for number crunching
      kdb+/q     - for timeseries-specific workloads
      Solidity   - for get-rich-quick scams
      NetLogo    - for agent-based simulations

      Typescript - for legacy browser, ReactNative and node.js code
      Kotlin     - for Android
      Swift      - for iOS and other Apple OSes

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd say Rust, Go, and Elixir.

</comment><comment><USER4> Clojure - paradigm shift and leverage. Rust - speed and safety.

</comment><comment><USER5> F# and .Net Core

<comment><USER5> And upon searching/reading: Giraffe framework.

I ran the hello world program on my 6-core MacBook and it got ~100 req/s. That was with SSL so enabling keepalive gets ~50k req/s (with P98 <1ms, P99 1ms, max 176 ms) on a Debug build though I don't expect much difference for a Release one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For frontend, I would say Svelte and Sapper.

</comment><comment><USER7> Rust,c, javascript

<comment><USER7> C will never die</comment></comment>