It’s interesting (and a little jarring!) to see how opinions have changed about why to do open source.
With some exceptions (that tend to prove the rule), open source is now mostly assumed to be a go-to-market strategy (if you’re a company) or a résumé-builder (if you’re an individual).
The idea you might publish code simply because it’s good feels almost quaint. I heard someone describe Mitchell Hashimoto’s work on ghostty as that of a “gentleman-coder”: the Andrew Carnegie of open source.
At Cased, we released sandboxes yesterday, an open source interface to cloud sandbox providers. A few months before, we released kit, a library for building AI devtools. Both times, friends asked me if this was a pivot for Cased, the company. I was surprised; of course it’s not! We just wanted to share useful programs, and hopefully bring some attention to our business, too.
You can still just do that. Here are some reasons that still matter.
I want to prove it actually works
Open sourcing forces honesty. If someone else can run it then it’s real, not just a demo.
I don’t want to maintain this solo
Sometimes you open source something because maintaining it solo is exhausting.
Better a few strangers file issues than carry it alone.
I want it to survive
Jobs end, companies pivot, repos get archived, and sad as it is, people leave us. Open sourcing keeps work alive.
I want to connect
Open source is a great filter. If someone cares enough to send a pull request, maybe they’re worth knowing.
I don’t want to explain it anymore
Sometimes the best documentation is just the repo itself.
Code wants to be free
Idealistic, sure. But still true.
I don’t want to be alone
I don’t want to code into the void. It means the world to me when someone runs something I’ve built.
Some of the motivations may have shifted, the spirit shouldn’t. You can still just open source stuff.
