used to be one of the “sharers,” maintaining a fairly popular blog, writing tutorials on platforms like DZone and CodeProject, answering questions on StackOverflow, and creating open-source projects that collectively amassed millions of downloads.
At one point, I decided to monetize one of my open-source projects by creating a commercial fork. That’s when a group of people, none of whom had contributed to the project in any way, started a witch hunt over a few super trivial lines of code they accused me of “stealing” from contributors. Despite having the full support of all actual contributors, the backlash from these outsiders left me drained and disillusioned. So I stopped sharing my work and contributing to open source altogether—and honestly, I’m happier for it.
To all the Jimmy Millers who genuinely appreciate the goodwill of creators: be aware that there are people who will leech off it or even destroy it.
At one point, I decided to monetize one of my open-source projects by creating a commercial fork. That’s when a group of people, none of whom had contributed to the project in any way, started a witch hunt over a few super trivial lines of code they accused me of “stealing” from contributors. Despite having the full support of all actual contributors, the backlash from these outsiders left me drained and disillusioned. So I stopped sharing my work and contributing to open source altogether—and honestly, I’m happier for it.
To all the Jimmy Millers who genuinely appreciate the goodwill of creators: be aware that there are people who will leech off it or even destroy it.