> but why would someone toil to create a new algorithm to solve a problem if someone else is just going to steal it in hours?

The same reason I have open sourced every line of code I have written in the last several years, even new inventions. Because it is good for society, and good for my reputation to show what I am capable of which has been very good for my career.

Better to be the one to open source it before someone else does.

The only business model left is convenience tax. Save people time and they give you money.

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baranul 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This has been debated about for quite a while, where people give donations in support or the "pay what you can" model.

Unfortunately, many have argued that it (donations or PWYC) doesn't work and people usually pay only when forced to. There is also the claimed psychological issue, where when something is made free or people can pay minimum amounts, that it is devalued or thought as near worthless. On the flip, various people and organizations have claimed that it's possible to use alternate models, depending on how it's done.

	▲	lrvick an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Hackers with time on their hands will never pay for anything on a computer they can do themselves, but those with more money than time will pay even if it is open source.

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djeastm 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>and good for my reputation

Do you think this will still apply for future generations? It seems like many people now are grabbing code either directly from model training or using agents to blindly scrape the web, finding code and customizing it without ever considering the author. Do you think individual contributors of open source code will have the same reputational incentive?

	▲	lrvick an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Do you think this will still apply for future generations? Not in the same way. Like today if you see a programmer with a bunch of punch cards of assembly they hand coded, that is impressive, but if that is all they have I would question if they can provide value in a modern software org. The reputation that matters moving forward will be the 100x engineer that is digitally sovereign and built all the software they use from firmware to kernel to UX. The one who automates everything, has a history of making things people want, and understands a system down to the metal. That is the only person I could be convinced to hire at this point, and the person I am striving to become. Everyone else will be unemployable in tech.

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TeMPOraL 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The only business model left is convenience tax. Save people time and they give you money.

Which is why LLMs are going to kill most of the software industry. Software products and services operate on this assumption - package some functionality into an opinionated UI that makes some kind of work marginally more convenient, slap a brand on top, and you now have a captive audience and the perfect upsale/ad delivery vector, i.e. the user interface.

LLMs flip that around, because suddenly, your UI is an obstacle sitting between the user and the problem they want to solve.

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tdeck 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Because it is good for society, and good for my reputation to show what I am capable of which has been very good for my career.

I feel that LLMs are destroying the reputation building benefits as well. It used to be that most people's published code was a result of their personal effort and thought process. This is no longer the case. Not only are many new contributions written by machine, but the very process of understanding and reasoning about code has been devalued.