←back to thread

Sourcegraph went dark

(eric-fritz.com)
424 points kaycebasques | 7 comments | 20 Aug 24 03:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
Show context
sqs ◴[20 Aug 24 10:28 UTC] No.41298641[source]▶
Sourcegraph CEO here. We made our main internal codebase (for our code search product) private. We did this to focus. It added a lot of extra work and risk to have stuff be open source and public. We gotta stay focused on building a great code search/intelligence product for our customers.

That's what ultimately lets us still do plenty of things for devs and the OSS community:

(1) Our super popular public code search is at https://sourcegraph.com/search, which is the same product customers use internally on their own codebases. We spend millions of dollars annually on this public instance with almost 1M OSS repositories to help out everyone using OSS (and we love when they like it so much they bring it into their company :-).

(2) We also have still have a ton of open-source code, like https://sourcegraph.com/github.com/sourcegraph/cody (our code AI tool).

BTW, if any founders out there are wondering whether they should make their own code open-source or public, happy to chat! Email in profile. I think it could make sense for a lot of companies, but more so for infrastructure products or client tools, not so much for full server-side end-user applications.

replies(14): >>41298707 #>>41299099 #>>41299575 #>>41299592 #>>41299724 #>>41299784 #>>41299956 #>>41300159 #>>41300346 #>>41300771 #>>41301859 #>>41305881 #>>41311564 #>>41312895 #
breck ◴[20 Aug 24 12:47 UTC] No.41299575[source]▶
I think the term the industry needs to embrace is "Early Source": https://breckyunits.com/earlySource.html

Make everything public domain, fully open source, just delayed by N years.

replies(3): >>41300322 #>>41300405 #>>41300564 #
1. ezekg ◴[20 Aug 24 14:29 UTC] No.41300405[source]▶
There is a term for this, no? https://opensource.org/dosp
replies(1): >>41300689 #
2. breck ◴[20 Aug 24 15:00 UTC] No.41300689[source]▶
Interesting! I hadn't seen that term. Thanks!

I don't like their implementation though. If one thinks from natural principles, one has to reject the idea of licenses on ideas.

Early source is in harmony with nature.

Also "Early Source" rolls off the tongue better than "Delayed Open Source Publication". ;)

replies(1): >>41300758 #
3. yjftsjthsd-h ◴[20 Aug 24 15:06 UTC] No.41300758[source]▶
> Also "Early Source" rolls off the tongue better than "Delayed Open Source Publication".

Yeah, but nobody will know what "Early Source" means until you explain it, whereas the latter makes perfect sense on first reading.

replies(1): >>41300914 #
4. breck ◴[20 Aug 24 15:24 UTC] No.41300914{3}[source]▶
There was a time when no one knew what "Open Source" meant.
replies(1): >>41303598 #
5. yjftsjthsd-h ◴[20 Aug 24 20:14 UTC] No.41303598{4}[source]▶
After decades, people still barely know what Open Source means[0]; if you can I think it's much better to make things as obvious as possible, like ex. the Creative Commons licenses - nobody has to ask what the "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International" license means.

[0] I remain surprised at the number of people, even on HN, who seem to think Open Source is the same as Source Available.

replies(1): >>41304873 #
6. breck ◴[20 Aug 24 22:47 UTC] No.41304873{5}[source]▶
Fair points.

> barely know what Open Source means

Perhaps there is no license that makes sense because licenses on ideas do not make sense. You simply cannot define them logically from natural principles without having to concede that they are intellectual slavery. Ideas on licenses have never made sense and never will.

replies(1): >>41305796 #
7. yjftsjthsd-h ◴[21 Aug 24 01:15 UTC] No.41305796{6}[source]▶
> Perhaps there is no license that makes sense because licenses on ideas do not make sense. You simply cannot define them logically from natural principles without having to concede that they are intellectual slavery. Ideas on licenses have never made sense and never will.

No, the idea is fine - I mean, sure I'd be fine[0] with totally abolishing copyright, but in the world we live in it makes perfect sense. I think it really is just a naming problem, if anything.

[0] Probably.