The framing assumes the ratio of "problem-and-solution" projects to "personal-brand" projects has shifted. I'd push back: I think the underlying ratio is roughly the same — what's shifted is what gets published.

The work of running an open-source project (issue triage, security disclosures, contribution guidelines, CI, release cadence, dependency maintenance) is way higher than the work of solving the original problem. People with the "here's my private workflow tool" mindset increasingly don't publish at all because they can't afford that tax. Meanwhile, anyone seeking brand-building benefits IS willing to take it on, because the brand-building is the point.

So the visible OSS landscape over-represents the brand category not because solution-sharing died, but because solution-sharing acquired a 10x maintenance overhead that most people now opt out of. I see it in my own dotfiles — full of small tools I'd happily share if "share" still meant "drop a gist." It doesn't, anymore.

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dullcrisp an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Do you all really have your random public git repos accidentally being used in production by Facebook? No one’s ever made one of my one-commit git repos a key component of corporate infrastructure.

Or do you mean that the meaning of what it is to “publish” something has shifted?

	▲	yowzadave an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly, I’m confused why people are feeling obligated to put more effort than they have interest for these projects. If Facebook did start using my project in production, then that would of course be their dumb decision that they would be responsible to fix!

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singpolyma3 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I still publish everything. If someone wants to come and ask me to do something they can happily find out I likely will not.

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david_allison 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I'd happily share if "share" still meant "drop a gist." It doesn't, anymore.

It still does. Feel free to use https://unmaintained.tech/ on your repo.

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skydhash an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> The work of running an open-source project (issue triage, security disclosures, contribution guidelines, CI, release cadence, dependency maintenance) is way higher than the work of solving the original problem.

Some tools I use, like msmtp[0] just publish tarballs and maybe have git repo browser. I strongly believe that github is a tarpit for opensource work. Especially when a new developer is brainwashed in behaving like they’re a business under contract.

[0] https://marlam.de/msmtp/download/