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Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Are you open-sourcing your systems so that others may benefit? Or keeping them locked down to extract maximum profit?

I downvoted you because this strikes me as gratuitously negative, mean-spirited, and/or uncalled-for. Asking for pointers to any open-source work they've done would have been more appropriate.

What exactly is negative in my comment? Is extracting max profit bad? Or open-sourcing work?

The way you worded it sounds very negative, as if the only reason for keeping thing locked down is to extract maximum profit.

If you had said something like "fund the work" it would have sounded more acceptable. There is a large space between "extracting maximum profit" and "doing work for free".

What other reason is there for keeping something locked down?

Off the top of my head, scientific publishing. Keep it locked down until you have published then open source it.

I personally wouldn't want my work code online, as its always rushed and there is a fair bit of technical debt I would like to to refactor, rather than having potential employers thinking that I always write shit code. Feature requests are valued more than code quality.

I suppose wanting to hide perceived 'shoddy' workmanship is a reason.

I say, let it all hang out. Code can be continually improved.

I happen to think that max profit is a worthy goal. And big ups to any one that takes that route. It's that sort of thinking that drives efficiencies that make all our lives better. So when I read that comment I don't view it as negative. That said I see how it could be taken as negative.

You describe those options as though they are at opposite ends of the same spectrum. I'd say they're somewhat orthogonal.

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