My school made open source a requirement. The funny part was having to argue with the people we were developing this for about opening the source. They were planning to make it a commercial app and were concerned that this would hamstring their monetisation.
One of them also somehow expected an app developed by students to have innovative value that would need to be kept closed source because otherwise people would steal it. In particular, he threw out the idea that he was hoping to eventually include an AI – long before the LLM hype – to help people, and that would obvioisly be such a technical achievement that it needed to be protected.
I needed the project, otherwise I’d have told him in no uncertain terms why I think leaving people alone with an AI assistant instead of forcing them to consult a specialist is a really dumb idea in healthcare.
But is all the code out there even worth putting in the effort?
I could go around fiddling with so/dll’s and ELF files to modify a game’s code, like a lot of modders end up doing, for games without modding support. But what would be the value of it unless I like the game enough to do so?
Probably not, but my point is that making something closed source isn’t necessarily going to protect it from - taking from comment above - commercial competitors.
I suppose you make a point, I’m not sure how my school would feel about me open sourcing my project code though 😅
Once I have more time for Personal projects I plan to open source everything.
My school made open source a requirement. The funny part was having to argue with the people we were developing this for about opening the source. They were planning to make it a commercial app and were concerned that this would hamstring their monetisation.
One of them also somehow expected an app developed by students to have innovative value that would need to be kept closed source because otherwise people would steal it. In particular, he threw out the idea that he was hoping to eventually include an AI – long before the LLM hype – to help people, and that would obvioisly be such a technical achievement that it needed to be protected.
I needed the project, otherwise I’d have told him in no uncertain terms why I think leaving people alone with an AI assistant instead of forcing them to consult a specialist is a really dumb idea in healthcare.
There’s this adagium that all source code is open to anyone with a reverse engineering tool. and some knowledge of assembly, and it is very true.
But is all the code out there even worth putting in the effort?
I could go around fiddling with so/dll’s and ELF files to modify a game’s code, like a lot of modders end up doing, for games without modding support. But what would be the value of it unless I like the game enough to do so?
Probably not, but my point is that making something closed source isn’t necessarily going to protect it from - taking from comment above - commercial competitors.
Yeah I get your point now.
If the thing is indeed ingenuous enough, then the competitor can simply pay for reverse engineering.