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by dghlsakjg 236 days ago
What does open sourcing an application have to do with helping kids?

There are plenty of arguments for open sourcing things. “Closed source apps necessarily deprioritize helping children” is not an obvious argument to me. Can you draw the connection more explicitly?
1 comments
aeon_ai 236 days ago
Scale and accessibility - Eliminating any barriers for children to get access to education, etc.

Not to mention, it’s an app trying to help kids get exposed to underpinning technologies - seeing how the game itself is made would be optimizing for that end.

It’s not that closed source deprioritizes, but the “helping kids” were the sole and primary goal sought, there’s a clear answer to what would align with that.

All said, it’s not a critique of the OP - reconciling ideals and practical reality often require trade offs that would allow for a project like this to happen in the first place.

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twostraws 236 days ago
I think it's hugely important to eliminate barriers to get access to education, which is why there's a free, web-based version of Hacktivate that is already being used 350+ schools around the world.

I also think there's a lot of people out there who would pay to have Hacktivate running offline, using the full power of their device, and with no external resources being required, so I made that too.

Suggesting that I need to make them open source to prove I want to help kids learn is really strange, particularly when literally thousands of students around the world are benefitting from my work without paying a cent.

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aeon_ai 236 days ago
As mentioned, no indictment, and you don’t need to prove anything - helping kids learns is clearly a goal.

But so too is making money off the iOS app, correct?

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