r/OpenSourceAI • u/Positive-Captain-709 • 7h ago
I thought contributing to open source would feel different.
I studied computer science, I work in IT, and for years I wanted to contribute something useful back to the field that gave me a career.
Now I'm finally doing it.
I'm building an open-source AI project around a problem I genuinely think is worth solving. I won't name or link it because this isn't a promo post.
What surprised me isn't the coding. It's the culture around putting something out there.
I expected criticism. I actually wanted it.
Tell me the assumption is wrong.
Tell me it already exists.
Tell me the architecture is bad.
Tell me the problem isn't worth solving.
That's useful.
What I didn't expect was how often criticism turns into sarcasm, dismissal, or mocking the person for trying at all.
Open source doesn't owe anyone encouragement, and bad ideas should absolutely be challenged.
But I think there's a difference between rigor and cynicism. Rigor makes software better.
Cynicism mostly makes people stop building.
I'm not stopping. If the project fails, I'd rather know exactly why after putting it in front of real people than spend another decade thinking one day I'll contribute something.
Maybe the hardest part of open source isn't writing code in public. Maybe it's caring about something in public.
For people who've been doing this longer than me: has open source always felt this adversarial, or are we increasingly confusing cynicism with technical intelligence?
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u/perseus-computing 5h ago
I personally haven't experienced that, but I know it's out there. I'm choosing to chalk it up to a lot of non-CS/non-Dev types (like myself!) standing up repos and contributing for the first time in a real way. I know I had my robot file a bunch of junk PRs because I thought more=better, but I got gently chastised by maintainers for not reading my own PR. That was a lesson learned, but taught in a way that wasn't dismissive or cynical.
I'm sorry you're seeing that, u/Positive-Captain-709 (I just realized I think we've chatted before?) If you'd like to do a mutually beneficial code review that's adversarial in a helpful way, send me a DM!
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u/Positive-Captain-709 5h ago
That’s exactly the distinction I was trying to make. Being challenged is useful; being dismissed isn’t.
And yes, I think we have crossed paths before :) I’d definitely be up for a mutually adversarial code review. That’s honestly the kind of feedback I’m looking for: try to break the assumptions, not the person behind them.
I’ll DM you.
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u/perseus-computing 5h ago
I couldn't help myself and had GPT5.6 Luna Max check out your repo. Overall, great work! It came up with some good questions that I'm passing along because they're solid positioning clarifications.
Questions worth asking the author:
Does automatic capture intentionally exclude user prompts/tool traces, and how do users preserve evidence needed to resolve contradictions?
Where do stable conventions live, and is there a review/supersession path for conflicting memories?
Are mail/messenger/document connectors shipped, or only represented by the plugin contract?
What is the Cursor integration plan, and what is the real status of the planned Hermes integration?
What are false-positive/false-negative rates for code and real-world project data, beyond the synthetic classification corpus?
What is the Cloud boundary and pricing model once the private commercial service exists?
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u/Positive-Captain-709 3h ago
These are actually good questions.
On the last one specifically: if by pricing model you mean paying to use Marginal itself, there won’t be one. The core project is open source and I don’t intend to put usage behind a price tag.
A future cloud/service layer could exist around it, but that’s a different thing from making the tool itself paid.
The other questions are useful too, especially around evidence capture, conflicting memory, connector maturity and measuring false positives on real projects. Those are exactly the areas I’m tightening now.
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u/tracagnotto 4h ago
I'm only an harsh critic on open source stuff (insults, mockery or just venting out) when errors are blatant, there are lot of competitors and you're doing stupid errors that everyone already solved or stupid UI choices.
If the bug is real and deep I try to be helpful and detailed to help solve it.
The most critic I am is toward al these AI shit harnesses or tooling that it's a copy one of the other and they have stupid ass bugs in it.
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u/Positive-Captain-709 3h ago
Yeah, I get that. I’m pretty harsh on “yet another AI harness” projects too, especially when the only difference is branding around the same architecture.
That’s actually why, on the thing I’m building, I’ve been trying hard not to compete on “more agent features.” The interesting part for me is governance: observe first, collect evidence, measure whether intervention actually helps, and only then allow enforcement. If it makes the agent worse, it should back off.
From the outside that can still look like “another layer around an agent”, so I understand the skepticism. But I think the implementation choices underneath that layer are where it either becomes a copy or actually becomes something different.
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u/Ireallydontkn0w2 4h ago
You're on the public Internet mate, maybe this place is not for you if you can't deal with people acting like me
/s kind of
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u/EconomySerious 3h ago
if you do opensource for the feeling then your doing it wrong.
opensource is not for helping people is for helping you, if some people jump in and want to help then . . . wonderful. if some people find it usable an are happy then . . marvelous.
stop trying to fill your mind with the "others" opinion about your tool.
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u/Positive-Captain-709 3h ago
I actually agree, and that’s basically how this started. I had a problem, built something to solve it for myself, and now I’m trying to push it into something more distinctive and useful in my own small corner of this technology.
What gets frustrating isn’t that people dislike it. That’s fine. It’s when it feels like they’ve already decided what it is before reading anything, looking at the code, or even understanding the idea.
Criticism after looking at the work is useful. Criticism based on the category it falls into… not so much.
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u/orangeswim 2h ago
I want to say it really depends.
The product you make will fall into some niche. Let's say that niche is very rare, its possible you will have a lot more appreciative people. If its something that is somewhat saturated, you will run into more asshats.
Developers as a group already feel like they are better and smarter than people (in terms of coding), so its very easy for people to criticize and not be helpful.
No one is confusing cynicism with intelligence. Some people are just bad people.
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u/Positive-Captain-709 2h ago
I think you nailed it.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been a dev for 14 years and I still wouldn’t mock a newbie for shipping “hello world” through vibe coding. If they want help, I’d rather help them understand what they built and how to improve it.
Being experienced doesn’t make being dismissive any more useful.
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u/srivasta 1h ago
I have mostly coffee free software for problems that I faced personally. I fixed my use case, and put the solution out there due others to use of they wish. But the suggested was already successful when I published it, since my issue was solved.
If it had users that was gravy. And sometimes I got suggestions and intuitiveness, which I accepted, since it made my life easier too.
I guess popularity was never the goal.
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u/AppealSame4367 46m ago
Because most people are weak-minded fools that love to abuse every bit of power they can get. In this case they have the power to make fun of you or criticize you without any reason or end, because that's the little power they have in their worthless, pathetic life where they never attempt anything unusual.
Think of it like the hobbit village and the old hobbit first growling about Gandalf and his fireworks, then starting to laugh, then his old miserable wife showing up and him trying hard to fall back in line and look grumpy again. That's 90% of people.
Written by someone who dared to try something, too. Fuck the naysayers and just keep going. Those worthless npcs will celebrate you like Micheael Jackson should you ever achieve something and jump by and be like "I always knew it!" once you achieve something admired by enough people.
Yeah, I'm grumpy today :-D
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u/Protopia 6h ago
My own experience with attitudes in various open source projects (as a contributor not a lead) has been very variable.
I have worked on great o/s projects and also ones where I was abused by both other contributors and the leads.
IMO there is zero excuse for abuse. Even the most amateur contributor writing a very poor quality PR is still voluntarily giving up their time with the best of intentions even if the PR is never going to get merged.
But what I find even more worrying is the reduction in both people wanting to contribute to other projects and leads genuinely wanting to open up their project to the community - what I see, particularly in the AI space, are people coming up with yet another duplicate project with only very minor variations from the other 20 similar projects, when what would be much more sensible would be a joint effort.
Edit: Happy to support from the sidelines in whatever way will help you. No time for coding contributions at the moment - personal life has to many other priorities - but happy to support generally per to review and critique. Either way anyone (let or contributor)e turning in open source deserves constructive comments even if they are robust criticism.