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by noname120 435 days ago
Any idea what the motivation could be?
3 comments

Gumroad's journey has been interesting: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting -> Billion dollar journey with VC backing to Kleiner selling back their stake to Gumroad for $1, which enabled Sahil to steer the company in a different direction.

Perhaps the shift to making the source available has more to do with work culture: https://sahillavingia.com/work

https://x.com/shl/status/1908146557708362188

Probably not entirely, but straight from the author.

Can't help but notice he's basically knowingly "donating" the code to multi-billion corporations to train their LLMs on (while in general those same corporations source their training data in ethically questionable ways), while mere mortal human individuals and small businesses are bound by a non-free license. An interesting decision to say the least.
i mean... what would any "mere mortals" use the code for other than to directly compete with Gumroad?
Sahil anticipates AI will significantly commoditize software. Especially following DeepSeek's impact. He has promoted Devin via twitter and likely aims to position Gumroad as the leading creator-focused alternative to traditional Open Source e-commerce platforms.