Why I'm (Almost) Returning to Open Source

This post recounts my journey of developing a side project as closed source, diverging from my usual open source approach, and why I eventually opted for dual licensing.

A few (or many? who counts…) months ago, I started developing an AI desktop app and platform (https://github.com/singulatron/singulatron). Prior to this, pretty much every side project I undertook was open source from the first line of code. But that recently changed…

Around the time of the Amazon Elasticsearch controversy, I began to feel somewhat foolish. I often question my core beliefs and wondered: is the open-source ethos merely a ploy to get people to write software for free? Do we conduct the R&D ourselves, only for a larger, well-funded entity to take over the idea and make substantial profits?

Is it about laying the foundations for free, on which giants can stand? To solve the hiring problem for free, to work for free? To suppress wages? To build something awesome that those with the cloud capacity can then take and sell?

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