Why I (start to) hate the Indie Hackers Community (Echo to Nico!)
I am quite new to this community. I‘ve enjoyed some topics and discussions and got real value out of it. But I‘ve started to see more and more Product Placements. Most comments are: „Wow, so brave of you! You got this! I actually wrote a blog post about this, giving you 7 tips to be better at what ever tf you do. And my super-nice SaaS is solving your problem! Coincidence?“
I came to a conclusion based on an unpopular opinion:
Most of what IHs built should be Open-Source FFS!
I am by no means a senior developer. I’m not even a junior developer. But I hack stuff together and try to provide value.
If there is one thing that is setting the Software Development domain apart from all other building-domains (mechanical engineering, etc.) it is the rich open-source culture. Damn, this text is most probably served from an open-source distro and has 100s of open-source libraries that make it even possible to not look like it was created in 1998.
I don‘t know if there are intelligent books or TED talks about this, but I came to one guiding principle of Open-Source for myself:
If it provides value for Software Development itself, open-source it!
We all are using our (more or less developed) skills to try to provide something of value to a niche worth providing. And if they think it is of value as well, maybe we get payed along the way.
But let’s stop selling stuff to development itself.
Look outside. There are enough problems to solve! For people not being in front of a shiny display all day.
Linus would spin in his grave if he were dead.
Remember: Peace, love and software❤️
Sorry for the rant and thank you for your attention to my small, novice voice.
And if you want to read more of my thoughts (which you shouldn’t), I‘ve got a SaaS perfectly solving your problem (not).
I like the sentiment. Most of us developers got our start by reading open source code and leveraging open source libraries.
I think it's tough to expect everyone to invest their time into something they can't earn money from. Maintaining an open source code base is hard work. A lot of people are entitled and can be very rude.
You‘re right. Open-source is hard work. My argument was not about working for free on open-source projects. But more about the idea of indie hacking more outside of the software development bubble.
Leveraging open-source heavily to make something you sell to developers seems somehow wrong to me. However, there are perfectly viable business-models that use an open-source mode (see plausible.io). Does that make sense?