the reason i open source things is not kindness

dev · Nov 12, 2025 · 1 min read

people assume open source is generosity. it is not. for me it is self-interest with better branding.

the real reasons

• i cannot fix my own tools alone. i shipped a project with exactly one bug report, from someone i do not know, in a language i had not used before. that was the entire value and it cost me nothing
• being wrong in public is free education. every issue i never got was a mistake i got to keep
• the code is the documentation. explaining something twice costs more than writing it down once
• i use everything i publish. the portfolio site, the terminal, the markdown renderer, the tools. none of them have a "real" version

what it is not

it is not a strategy. i have no interest in a business, and the moment i start treating publication as marketing, the whole thing becomes a performance.

the part nobody mentions

maintaining is the job. the writing takes an afternoon, the answering takes a year. i am fine with that because i want the code to exist outside my head, but anyone who says "just open source it" has not yet read the issues.