Colors.js Debacle


There’s been a lot of discussion about the colors.js project lately. Most are talking about developer burnout and big companies taking advantage of open source developers. This particilar person decided that he was sick of companies “making millions of dollars” from his work and wanted to draw attention and stop them from using his software.

Sorry, but no one is making millions of dollars from colors.js. If the project didn’t exist, corporate developers would either write some code themselves to output text in color or just output text without color. It’s a “nice to have”, but not a required thing.

Aside from that, if you want to make money from your code, don’t release it with an MIT license. I’m all for people making money as a software developer. I’m a professional software developer myself who is paid for my work. However, I also release some software as open source on my GitHub profile. I don’t expect anything from anyone for what I release as OpenSource. It’s my gift to the world :) I am overjoyed when people decide to contribute, because that means they found it useful enough to want to add to it! I also assume, at some point, when I apply for a job in the future, someone may look at my GitHub profile and see what I’m up to. I surely would not want to be caught being a jerk and purposely defacing the code I released with the intention of hurting projects that depend on it.

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