I'm actually kind of shocked at the majority reaction here. I can relate in many ways to the author and can feel his struggle through the story. I empathize even though I can see where the mistakes were made.
I figure we just have a lot of Carls in here. There's always been a very business-oriented culture here: people are looking for success in their careers and monetary success is a big part of it. Contracts and IP are big parts of the business brain and I think people just struggle to see things from a different perspective.
All I can say is I'm very appreciative for the author to share the perspective. He says it clearly, there aren't any bad guys there and I think so many people in this forum want there to be one.
It's actually pretty hilarious when you put it like that. Oh, you are insisting there are no bad guys and you refuse to make a bad guy? OK, then YOU are the bad guy! For... having feelings. Bad feelings you should feel ashamed for having. Or at least keep them to yourself for god's sake! Teach you to have feelings but still decide there are no bad guys! There's ALWAYS a bad guy if there are Feelings!
But yeah I'm shocked too, not what I would have expected from an HN comment thread. Maybe if he had been a coder instead of an author? I mean, HN threads reliably are on the side of coders who release their code open source but then have that code used by someone else to make billions, thinking they have the right to be mad and deserve a cut despite literally putting an open source license on it saying otherwise! (which this guy didn't do... until now) I really don't know what's going on.
Are people actually not mad that this guy was (at points in his life) upset he didn't get a cut, but actually mad that he released his thing CC0 in the end instead of trying to get a cut? Because he didn't do a good enough job of getting a cut, and has only himself to blame for that, and should be blamed for it? But I don't want to assume people mean something different than what they say, when they say they are actually mad at him for having the temerity to have feelings about not getting a cut. I'm just bewildered.
I figure we just have a lot of Carls in here. There's always been a very business-oriented culture here: people are looking for success in their careers and monetary success is a big part of it. Contracts and IP are big parts of the business brain and I think people just struggle to see things from a different perspective.
All I can say is I'm very appreciative for the author to share the perspective. He says it clearly, there aren't any bad guys there and I think so many people in this forum want there to be one.