Isn’t that why it isn’t popular in the first place? Cuz it’s impossible so stop others from making money on your free open source works?

Nostr is the rebirth of the open web. No algorithms, no gatekeepers, just pure signal. 💜 ❤️

It isn't clear to me that closed source will matter either given how models are training on copied shit anyway. Reverse engineering will get easier. It's probably goofy easy when a tech company owns larger stacks (like Microsoft owning an OS, Dev tools, server, AI, git repo storage, etc). It's a weird time. I do hate to see OS getting abused though. There indeed used to be some give and take. But honestly that's been dying in many areas lately.

I think it was fine before because you still needed expertise to understand the code and build a fork that you could eventually contribute back to. but now that code has been commoditized, the negatives are become larger than the positives

no, there are licenses that prohibit this. the problem introduced by ai is “clone this but make it legally distinct”

definitely, the real value will be large non-slop codebases that don’t break down. That will be so valuable that i don’t think it would be worth sharing unless you just want to get scooped

Open source has always been a scam. Microsoft bought GitHub because it gives them free access to massive amounts of code, with millions of developers improving software at no cost. Corporations have brainwashed millions of programmers into believing that open source is the right and noble path. The only benefit of open source is that you get programmers improving your product for free. But the moment your product becomes popular enough to make money, corporations step in, copy your code legally, and compete against you. And because it’s open source, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Isn’t that dependent on that type of open source license you use?

I suppose legality will be the main issue but I think it's too late to meaningfully address those issues. It should have been done years ago, but the only people with enough money to sustain or start such a legal fight were the ones doing all the copying.

No licenses make sense anymore, you can just prompt “make it look legally distinct “ like he mentioned. Then license no longer applies no matter what it is

I am loyal to the OpenSource code because of privacy, and being auditable by the community.

Being able to see things from a devs pov is incredibly interesting to me…

Was Bill Gates right after all? 🤔 I mean about FOSS, not about sleeping with Russian girls or pandemics or slipping your wife antibiotics without her knowing 😂

Thats still a very important factor, but maybe could be a small verifiable open sandboxed kernel of a larger codebase

IP was always total bullshit. It was only Americans and those in their shadow who believed in it. There is nothing wrong with open source. The moats now will be through people in the networks. Devs aren’t ready for this because they’re generally antisocial retards and instead of listening to their Users they go and build shit that nobody asked for because it interests them more then serving their network who pays their bills. You will become a cautionary tale of Nostr and this network will be just fine without you working on Xitter replacement clients.

Ok, i would like to see you dump your time and energy into a software project, release it, and have 10 people copy it at the click of a button with better marketing. Literally anyone can do this now at the click of a button with no expertise.

Moats through people in the networks is exactly right. Code is easy to copy, communities aren't. The best open source projects win because of their contributor ecosystems, not their licenses.

To be honest, not all jurisdictions are as advanced as the US when it comes to software licensing. In some countries, the GPL has never fully worked in practice - it was treated as just another OSS license, something authorities effectively regarded as public domain 😄

Ok, give me 2 weeks.

@jb55 >Like whats the point of open source anymore, it's about SOFTWARE FREEDOM the ability to control the technology in your life this is the problem with using the term 'open source' you completely miss the point of why we use #freesoftware. It's not to prevent competitors from doing things, it's to make sure they can't prevent *us* from understanding what *our* things are doing > before it made sense for sourcing free labour and collaboration, but copying is so much more powerful now and correspondingly, our ability to control and develop the technology in our lives is much better.

you have the freedom to generate code to do anything you want now

Nightmare scenario all around tbh

I mean the theory of code, like music, and math only allows for so many variations, correct? And which parts get copyrighted like <img src="source"> for example is the only way at least as far as I'm aware to program an image into a website so it's like that's not really stealing if it's the only way to do it. That's the main thing I personally don't understand in all honesty but maybe it's different with the actual languages like C(+)(+), python, etc.

There is a learning curve ahead for anyone who wants to copy your startup. Also they don’t have you and you’re experience with your community and your innovation capacity.

There is no learning curve anymore. All you need is an anthropic subscription. if your stuff is open source they can continuously copy your innovation in realtime with a prompt

Your startup is more than code

by that logic, what's the point of closed source? at least if the code is open (and well written) I can know what I'm running on my machine

if you want your startup to fail right away, that's true

so that your startup even has a small chance of success in a world where software is trivial to generate

if you have an amazing and reliable architecture, thats where the value is. Something that is reliable and properly engineered. Its the only advantage left over the slop army

if we are already in the phase of thinking this shit will be the only thing that can generate code in the world...sink this in...ai will read your closed source executable file read it and create a better aource code. Why create closed source so?

increasing the difficulty is the point though. Before it was difficult to copy and execute so noone did it. Reversing a binary is still difficult, even for ai

You're thinking like a developer rather than a business guy. If source code is worthless, give it away and monetize in other ways. This Is exactly like industrialization "killing" artisans. Yes most couldn't operate like before, but there's now super niche artisans and cost of the basics are much lower with higher average quality

Thats not my point at all, i think *good* and *well engineered* software will be valuable. And if theres any value for software engineers left it will be that, safeguarding their good architecture from ais. AIs can’t really build large, well engineered things by themselves atm. But they are really good at stealing

I may not be good at products business, but I'm good at professional services business. I think this is the one type of business that open source will continue to support. It's always been this way for me, being in devops most of my career. I would always pick products that were open vs. closed, and this leads to some good outcomes such as the business you work for not being tied into a bunch of 3rd party contracts, more flexibility for the companies needs and integrations, and more employment. Aside from that, for nostr in particular, the source we generate makes it easier for nostr to spread by training the AI with more code per-capita than other competing ideas like bsky. This snowball effect will eventually lead to more employment opportunities for working on nostr services than for other less popular or closed ideas. Open source has always been a really hard business to model, very few successes vs. product businesses that draw investment easier and scale without more humans. However, it does still power most of the world's compute so, generally I would say it is possible to succeed. Look at openclaw, this is a good example. There were likely hundereds of product companies that built a similar thing all to be crushed in a few months by open source, and the dev did pretty good for himself. That's a unicorn exit for opensource, the likes of which I am not sure I've ever seen. This is exciting times, I think nostr did a good job training the AI, and that means all the devs that put effort into it mostly-selflessly made this happen. The code lives on past the abandoned projects and becomes something new faster than ever was possible before. The downsides and upsides are there for sure, it is worth coming up with an opensource business plan for your company if you choose to go this route so that you can succeed as a business. Blindly running an opensource business without a plan, is not likely to succeed and given it's a lot harder than a product company it should be given more thought and consideration vs. shooting from the hip.

Do you not believe ai will just learn or steal good architecture eventually? I'm not sure if your point was just that ai steals but it sounded like you implicitly are concerned about the economic value of human made software.

So the solution to other companies having bad open code is half-bad closed code? It doesn't make sense to me. There's no reason why any software should have non closed source code

* should have closed source code

So you believe all videos games should be open source?

Why am I not surprised to hear that from you?

and who are you?

Your secret admirer

It turns out all the labor behind a lot of Projects isn’t that valuable. You are typing characters into a keyboard. What difference does it make if those characters are “hey clanker go to this app and build me a clone” vs actually coding it. You may as well build in the open and monetize in ways that are value add not the opposite.

Of course! They used to be in the 80s, we only changed that because of convenience.

video games can take decades of effort to build, and you think you should get it for free. you’re delusional bud.

I didn't say that I should get anything for free lol i believe in paying for tech, and have donated money to many open-source projects I use... Just because something is open-source doesn't mean it's free Having the code != getting it for free

The people who win in this age are the ones who are good at running companies. Its basically been trending for a long time already. Remember the convo we all had back in 2023 about IP and Trademark protection with Damus? if not physical, you're gonna need that to build out that moat and only digital its gonna get wiped out. That's why I still run physical companies; the digital stuff is for shits and giggles.

I've been thinking about this, a lot, as well. I was recently sort of frustrated, that I spent two weeks, full-time, building a massive, complex system. I thought, "Someone could just come and copy it because of AI." But then I remembered that, before AI, it would have taken me two months, to build, not two weeks. The potential reward is much lower, but so is the effort. And I don't think AI could have built it, so it's so unfair that AI could copy it. But it's actually just the MVP. I have so many ideas of what to build in it, next, and no AI I have consulted has thought of any of those ideas. It's so odd. AI is a like a whole gigantic factory of geniuses, which sounds intimidating. But there are already hundreds of millions of _human_ geniuses. And, yet, I'm the only genius on the planet who has had this idea... I'm feeling sanguine.

What's the point of closed source when any competitor can copy your entire startup at the click of a button? Going all-in on open source shows more of the confidence that you have in your brand, distribution, and maintenance/customer support ability, which is what matters in the end when the cost of building drops to zero. Sure it gets easier to copy a product, but that can help you to find issues and resolve them along with the copiers. The product itself is also becoming less and less important; brand identity and community is key. Security vulnerabilities are also somewhat more enticing/rewarding to find if you're unaware of what's running behind the scenes imo, so being closed source could be more of liability in that case.

They can’t copy your architecture… if they are shit at agentic engineering you will have an advantage

code gets copied. community, trust, and narrative can't. the moat just moved somewhere harder to reach.

OSS is important for research and reproducibility. academia operates on papers and trust. but big tech is already closing down their research. so it only applies to university research labs

IMHO, I would not lose heart with open-source if I were in your position. I am not a developer, but am deeply into technology especially for privacy and sovereignty purposes. I won't use closed source applications for any critical or important function (including all communication), and avoid closed source if at all possible. As our freedoms and daily lives are affected more and more by the encroaching surveillance apparatus, others will follow suit at an increasing pace, out of necessity. For example, when evaluating a VPN, Mullvad for example; if it is not open source I will not use it. Then it comes down to reputation over time, feedback and actions of the organization, people involved, reliability over time, response to state pressure, rate of improvement and adaptation etc etc… none of those factors can be copied and pasted. Copy the code and call it "Nullvad", charge half the price, and I am still not interested. In addition, and perhaps more important: - Computer code is language which changes our reality through software and computing devices. - Spoken and written language changes our reality through the hearts and minds, and thus actions, of men and women. Same concept, different medium. Imagine not speaking or writing anything unless it was copyrighted and paid for. Imagine only writing or speaking your mind in exchange for paper debt slave tokens one can print, as opposed to writing and speaking your mind to invoke change in the hearts and minds of the good souls around you. Once we extinguish the debt slavery control system, and the majority of our energy and output is not stolen, we will all be abundant. Shouldn't that be the goal and reward, as opposed to prioritizing paper money? I understand there is nuance behind this, as we all have bills to pay, but chasing paper money, and measuring our impact or setting our goals in paper money should not be the guiding light. In summary I believe in time that ALL closed source software will be distrusted and rejected by non-slaves, and that open-source software will be embraced and flourish based mainly on factors other than the code base (see above).

It was initially about sharing.

The entire point is for people to copy your code and that's why I develop under the MIT license where possible.