Open Source

I’ve heard about Cathedral and the Bazaar, “with enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I think open source is a donation to the world. It is Universal Basic Income, but not in a monetary way. The distributed contributors create digital welfare that merges into a giant on whose shoulders everyone can stand.

I’ve also heard about many bad news on open source, maintainers resigned, project discontinued.

So, what’s next?(core-js) 

• This was the last attempt to keep core-js as a free open-source project with a proper quality and functionality level. It was the last attempt to convey that there are real people on the other side of open-source with families to feed and problems to solve. Denis Pushkarev, February 14th 2023
• core-js is still maintained by zloirock, today is 2025-03-12, zloirock update dependencies 22e21fb · 2 days ago

I’m reading the book The Minimalist Entrepreneur , which includes the following quotes:

• “Work in Public”
• “Teach Everything You Know”
• “Create Every Day”

There was a Chinese company (maybe in Singapore now) called Affine  . Their main product is a Notion alternative, they are open source, they work in public, and they have talented engineers from Vercel (creator of Next.js, which is now the official starter for React ) and other famous people in the industry. At that time, it was the dream company, working on a dream product, with a dream team. They were at the center of the spotlight.

Then the fame collapsed quickly. Some staff complained about the work, the low salary, and the management, some even started to argue and fight in public, “teaching everything to the audience”. Ultimately, some people left while others stayed. Affine is still actively developing in public, but people have already lost interest. Notion remains the go-to online note-taking app.

I think there’s no need to open source the project from the start. Let it grow, share it, get feedback, and build a community. When it becomes popular, create a roadmap that includes the open source part.