FAQs

Why is Summit for Lemmy not open source?

Summit for Lemmy is closed source for a couple of reasons. The gist of it is that I want to maintain control of the distribution of the app and I also don't want people to modify it's source. The easiest way to accomplish both is to have it be closed source.

For the full answer, it might help to understand where I'm coming from. I'm a pretty experienced developer with a full time job. I created Summit on my free time as something I could work on for fun. In particular, I enjoy writing code and maintaining it. I do not enjoy the management aspects of development.

Through my time as a software engineer, I've picked up a lot of habits and quality expectations for my code. This means that if Summit were to be open source, I would have to carefully review every PR that comes in in order to maintain the quality and coding style of the repository. Reviewing PRs is generally not something I find fun so this would detract from my experience working on Summit. Of course I could just prevent anyone from contributing to the code but that brings me to the other issue.

Another reason why Summit is closed source is because I want control over it's release and distribution. If Summit were to be open source I'm worried that it would be forked especially if I were to reject contributions to the source. If this happens it's very likely a community version of the app will be release which will mean losing control over the app's distribution.

Making the source closed is the simplest solution to both of these concerns.