[weli]

I love your work on bun. How do you feel about all the constant concerns being raised about the quality of the project lately? I understand some of them might just be typical twitter hate but some of them are real. And I think people are right to question why you are adding image processing or web views inside a javascript runtime when there are bugs affecting production that sit unaddressed. For example on of our biggest blockers right now is https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/issues/6608 which was reported in 2023, still affecting us 3 years later.

[hardwaregeek]

When you start getting hate, you’ve made it. Up until then you’re a hypothetical that people like. Maybe they’ve built a side project with you or read the docs. You only get hate when people have used your tool and butted up against limitations. We saw this with Deno too where they went from beloved potential savior to realistic, limited tool. Hate is good. It means people rely on you

[Imustaskforhelp]

Do you know which project gets the most hate? Nodejs, so in that sense, Nodejs has made it and it is widely deployed but this hate was the reason that two seperate alternatives for Node have emerged as Deno and bun.

Recently Bun's latest version had memory leaks which crashed production code from my understanding and their attitude[0] of saying OSS will have no human contribution allowed, now doing these ports of zig to rust, going back for years what the decision making of using zig was and this code basically being vibed as there is no way that they are reviewing the code while being VC funded/bought by anthropic.

These are all genuine issues which cause hate. You can say people are hating because people rely on it but the true thing is that also seems like a bait and switch and that people switched from node.js to bun (maybe even being locked inside bun), only for them to do these highly questionable decisions which is the reason why people are starting to hate on bun.

Atleast that's my interpretation right now reading this whole thread.

[0]:https://x.com/jarredsumner/status/2048434628248359284: "I expect OSS to go the opposite direction: no human contribution allowed. Slop will be a nostalgic relic of 2025 & 2026."

- Jarred Sumner

[satvikpendem]

Well yeah, it's in Zig, not a memory-safe language, so of course I'd expect memory leaks. That's why I haven't seriously used bun and instead use a runtime that actually is in a memory-safe language, Deno in Rust. It's like wearing roller skates without brakes and wondering why you keep running into things.

[LinusU]

Memory safety has nothing to do with memory leaks, and it's perfectly valid to leak memory in Rust?

e.g. `Box::leak(Box::new( ... ))`

[satvikpendem]

Generally it's automatically dropped unless you go out of your way to use the leak function, which most software doesn't do.

[nicoburns]

Memory safety doesn't help too much here, but "RAII" (automatically dropping values when they go out of scope) does.

[bnolsen]

Unit tests in zig will fail if the tested code leaks memory.

[user34283]

It’s a reasonable expectation from a clearly successful and competent engineer who is using the latest tooling.

Who is to say that it’s wrong?

[ktm5j]

Okay, let's be honest. That's a feature request, not a bug report.

[weli]

I'd agree but bun is supposed to be a "drop-in replacement" and is marketed as such. This breaks several packages and projects.

[ktm5j]

Ohh thanks, did not realize. That I can understand.

[throwaway2037]

Why not offer a bounty to get this issue fixed? Are you otherwise paying any money to the bun team?

[latexr]

This is getting stupid. Now one can’t even make a reasonable polite question with praise without being asked if they pay.

Bun raised millions of dollars and was acquired by a commercial entity which bragged in the same blog post of reaching $1B. They’re not a guy with an eyepatch and a tin can out on the street.

Open-source developers should be compensated, but they don’t have to be. You can’t reasonably offer your work for free then complain someone isn’t paying you. If you want to be paid, charge for it.

Signed: A long time open-source developer who has dedicated years of full-time work to useful projects without compensation or raising VC money or being acquired.

[jaapz]

Come on, whenever a project is discussed on hackernews, there is always one comment of "why are you working on X, when you should be fixing bug Y?!".

We are all software engineers on here (or at least many of us are), we all know how project management and prioritisation works right? We can't work on everything all at once.

[Chris2048]

given the alleged context, X being something "reported in 2023, still affecting us 3 years later", is this not a reasonable PM / priority decision to question?

[latexr]

> Come on, whenever a project is discussed on hackernews, there is always one comment of "why are you working on X, when you should be fixing bug Y?!".

That is not what the question is about, which you’ll see if you engage with it properly in good faith. There is a single question in the comment (indicated, as one does in English, by a question mark):

> How do you feel about all the constant concerns being raised about the quality of the project lately?

Everything else is context and opinion to explain the question.

[2colours]

I think the question still deserves a proper answer.

[Mad_ad]

No it doesn't. No opensource dev need to answer anything, if you dont like it, fork it and do the work yourself.

[philipallstar]

Maybe it can be better phrased as "I think this question doesn't deserve that answer"

[bouk]

No, open-source maintainers don't owe you anything if you don't pay for it

[throwaway2037]

I have said the same many times here on HN. This in/famous blog post really changed my view: "Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing": https://mikemcquaid.com/open-source-maintainers-owe-you-noth...

[Chris2048]

I have similar problems with product I do pay for, and I still get told I have no say. FO/OSS distinction is a red herring.

At some point it need to be made clear; it's not a legal obligation, but a reputational challenge.

[pie_flavor]

Please observe a policy of extreme wisdom: https://github.com/Fody/Home/blob/master/pages/licensing-pat...

[throwaway2037]

I do know why your post is downvoted, and I disagree with it. Here is my upvote.

I read the link that you shared. This is genius. To quote:

    > Community backed
    > Fody requires significant effort to maintain. As such it relies on financial support to ensure its long term viability.
    > It is expected that all developers using Fody become a Patron on OpenCollective.

I can remember years ago reading some posts/writings from none other than Richard Stallman (yeah, that guy). He was talking about charging people for a copy of the source code to your open source project. At the time, I thought it was weird and did not make sense. This is basically the same thing but in 2026. After watching so much bullshit around open source projects (basically, assholes expecting free service for whining the loudest), I have come to the conclusion that "money talks" and helps to realign incentives that are warped by open source.

[gobdovan]

Are you being ironic or serious? I can see both pros (encourage people to see themselves as customers) and cons (less initial adoption) to the licensing, although I'd maybe leave bug issues open for everybody.

What aspect do you think dominates?

[pie_flavor]

Serious. And although 'seeing yourself as a customer' certainly makes things slightly better, I'm also referring just to the amount of cash that enters the coffers once it's no longer a tip jar per se. It is open source on the subject of copyright, but as was described in an article on here the other day, open-source doesn't mean community. By positioning the community aspect as something you have to buy into to enter, you end up (a) selling a product for cash without compromising open source and (b) ensuring everyone you deal with is serious. It's like the Red Hat model but workable at the lower end of software at the expense of lower upside.

[LadyCailin]

The answer is because YOU haven’t fixed it yet. Chop chop, we’re all waiting on you.