Ask HN: How do solo devs protect their work in the age of vibe coding?
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The dilemma I am facing is this:
If I open-source early, I get feedback, trust, users, and maybe contributors. But I also expose the core design and algorithm. With LLMs, turning a repo into a different implementation is much cheaper than it used to be.
If I keep it closed, I protect the work for longer, but I also lose the main advantages of OSS: adoption, review, community, and credibility. Worse, someone else may still build something similar and become the default project in the space.
I’m a new solo dev with almost no audience. If a large org or a well-known developer sees the idea and ships a similar implementation, they can get more attention immediately than I can get in months. And in the end I get nothing for open-sourcing my project.
How would you handle this as a solo dev?
Discussion (8 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
It happened a million times over, you have some brilliant idea, people start using it, and after a few months some big company puts 10-100 engineers on it and they do the same thing.
I would say that the key is to get to a big enough audience so they would rather buy you out than compete. Easier said than done :P
And the biggest question is: do you want to commit 100% of your time and money to building your company, or you would rather spend your time building new things?
If it's the other case, where you're worried about plagiarism, I actually don't think you need to be too concerned. I once saw an interview with Airbnb's founder Brian Chesky where he talked about how Airbnb also faced many imitators in its early days. These competitors grew rapidly too, but looking back, the difference between imitators and originals is that while imitators might get off to a quick start, they find it hard to persevere through difficulties like the original does in the mid-to-late stages. In the end, it's often the original who stuck with their vision that survives.
Selling things online was an idea by Amazon, now everyone sells online.
If you really want people not to copy your idea then make something which cannot be easily vibe-coded or copied easily i.e. which require serious skills.
Seriously, I think you should just do it closed source and pursue adoption by other channels. If people ask you why it's not open source, say you're not ready to manage it yet.
If your primary motivation to use an Open Source license is gaining trust and users, you're just going to be disappointed.