HN user
Junaid, founder of:
https://openship.org
https://opensource.builders
https://marketplace.openship.org
building decentralized, interoperable marketplaces using opensource commerce
You’re right, that is a strong possibility. The skeptic in me thinks he did it because he thought it would affect his sales if word got out. He was ardent in his beliefs and I don’t think people drop those beliefs that easily unless there is a monetary incentive.
It seems he had some really “interesting” blog posts on his website. The crazy part is that he took down his blog, but also removed it from The Internet Archive[0]. He’s gone to great lengths to remove his blog posts and that makes me wonder what he really said in those posts.
That’s where being open-source is the hedge. I’m paying for your service and you still fuck me over, I have the option to self host. You start open-source and then start making the product worse? I’m forking and maintaining the old version.
Taalas[0] seems to be what you're talking about.
Why would they not charge as much as possible? Who else is launching satellites? He’s got one of the biggest moats I’ve ever seen.
What’s even more concerning is that the current government changed their requirements for the rural broadband program so companies like StarLink can bid to bring internet to those remote areas instead of using wired or fiber connections. Not far-fetched that StarLink wins this contract and then squeezes those customers over time. ISPs will have little reason to expand in those underserved areas without government subsidies.
Exactly why every user of a product should be an strong supporter of the competitor. It's what keeps your product honest and competition is good for the consumer.
I disagree, business SaaS also gets enshittified mainly because of feature creep like you mentioned. Business SaaS starts by solving problems for 1 type of business, but as they try to cover more use cases, the product gets worse for the original use-case.
Yes this collective shared knowledge, akin to what open-source provides for software, will always win in the long run
Very true, but if the company has raised VC funds, step 3 is inevitable. Even if the original founder resists making the product worse, the future execs won't blink an eye.
Open-source on the other hand, isn't profit-driven as much. The builder is making it for himself and for the love of it. Give me that bread maker 10/10 times. And yes, that bread maker might also start to chase profits and make the bread worse, but I can fork his product and be on my merry way if he does.
All these arguments ignore that the bread you buy today is not always the bread you’ll get years from now.
Don’t we all know the cycle by now?
1. Company pours money and resources to create good product
2. Good product gets customers and those customers use word of mouth to get product viral and even more customers
3. Eventually the company has to make a profit and in that pursuit, they make the product worse by adding ads, adding paywalls, forcing login or subscription service, dark patterns
I’ve seen it happen with so many products I used that I only use open-source now. And if the feature is small, I just build it myself. In your bread example, open-source is the ultimate cookbook and chefs who understand that cookbook can out cook the best chefs out there.
TypeWhisper looks really nice man, great work. I’ll add it to my directory and sorry HN marked it dead. I also post open-source projects and HN marks it dead as well. Feel like the system is broken or people just flag anything they don’t like.
is it the prompt you once wrote?
Yes, but also the prompts you give after, and the iterations you continue to do. Art is rarely something you build once and forget about. A lot of that going on in AI no doubt, but the builders who polish their work and strive for perfection are still the builders they were before AI.
You mention the novel writer and yes that person who's great at writing novels will create great art. But the ones that are 80% of the way their, but maybe can't nail the ending, or segue into different plot-lines, can now create great art and have AI get them there. Subconsciously, they will get better at those things by using AI and seeing the result.
I'm always reminded of that I, Robot scene where the scientist says "you must ask the right questions." And that is true now more than ever.
I replaced Raycast recently with Sol[0], but SuperCmd[1] is also really good.
And I’m testing Helium Browser[2]. It’s based on Chromium, but has changed a lot under the hood and I’ve been daily driving it.
Also replacing CapCut with OpenCut[3].
I’ve also completely ditched Codex CLI with Pi[4] and now am trying OMP[5].
0. https://github.com/ospfranco/sol
1. https://github.com/SuperCmdLabs/SuperCmd
2. https://github.com/imputnet/helium
3. https://github.com/OpenCut-app/OpenCut
Open-source alternatives are being launched at an ungodly pace and they are really polished. All these comments about AI Slop are underestimating how good these builders have gotten and AI lets you iterate really fast. If the builder actually uses the software he's building, the feedback loop is really efficient.
I keep a directory of open-source alternatives and just in the past month, I've replaced applications I've used for years with open-source alternatives.
I wish my Xbox Series S would work on USB-C. Some guy modded his with a buck convertor[0] and I wish there was an easier way in 2026.
Those firms investing time and money may make a good product at first, but it will slowly get worse as they try to recoup their costs and make a profit. The person making the open-source alternative may do the same, but I can fork it and go on my merry way if they do.
Personal software is the future and a person building software for themselves tends to withstand enshittifcation. That's why I love when people open-source projects they love and are passionate about and I will always choose them over proprietary ones.
People always argue "well, Slack and Notion have distribution and the product isn't everything." Ok and? The person making it for themselves doesn't necessarily need distribution for it to be valuable. In fact, it's even more attractive that way.
CC system prompt is bloated, use Pi to test Codex instead
Really nice site! From your experience, what’s your go-to model for nice storefronts?
Looks really nice, thank you for open-sourcing. I keep a directory of opensource alternatives. Would you say this is a Discord or Slack alternative?
I built something similar by forking Vibetunnel[0] and turned into a Next.js app that runs on my laptop. Then I connect my laptop and phone to the same Tailscale network and use the 100.xx on my phone to access the same application on my phone.
Your app is better than the web app I have since it's native, but we still need to use your CLI and daemon to work. Would be really nice if you supported Tailscale.
Also take a look at Zedra[1]. It's similar to yours and powered by Iroh[2] which will replace the need for Tailscale.
0. https://github.com/amantus-ai/vibetunnel
To play online, you do need to pay them. But for local games, no fees after buying the game.
Exactly, it seems their only way to make money is charging for online play which used to be $5/m and now $10/m for Game Pass Essential. Now that their high console prices aren't getting new players, the only play is to squeeze the existing ones and increasing the cost to play online.
They actually tried this a few months back when Game Pass Ultimate went from $20/m to $30/m. I cancelled my sub and went to essential. Then Asha backtracks and reduces it to $22/m and people are like wow, she will save Xbox. No, it just shows me they probably saw so much churn, especially from long-time subs, that they backtracked.
You say you only use open-source and I’m the same way but I’ve asked agents to evaluate open-source alternatives. How is that psychosis? If it’s typescript or JavaScript, I can read the code but if it’s Rust/Go/etc, yeah I get AI to read it and tell me if it can solve my problem or if it has the features I need.
It’s actually the whole premise of my open source alternative directory called Opensource Builders[0].
I never told you what prompt to even feed your AI my guy. As far as I know, you can be like rip this repo to shreds and tell me what’s wrong with it and you’ll get your answer.
Crazy how you guys blindly trust proprietary apps where you can’t even read the code but asking you to read open-source code is psychosis?
Don’t take my word for it then, ask any terminal agent to dig in and get an idea of how good these apps are.
In the end, I built Openship and Openfront for my e-commerce business and then turned them into SaaS. All the revenue for these are just a cherry on top of our existing e-commerce businesses.
And I worked with Next and Keystone long before AI came along. Check my GitHub commits if you need some back story.
And I’m not building these 20 SaaS to prove I have bonafide SWE skills. I’m building them because I plan to have my own gyms, hotels, grocery stores down the line powered by these SaaS. SWE to me a means to an end and that’s to have many different businesses.
That’s the neat part, you can use it headlessly. The built in dashboard and storefront are using the GraphQL API but you can deploy your own external dashboard and storefront using the same API.
We’re also very bullish that the chat interface is the universal UX now. Instead of sifting through the dashboard to change a product price or sell in a new region, you can use the built-in agent and just tell it to do that. Every Openfront comes with an MCP server that interfaces with the API so the agent can literally do anything you can do using the dashboard and API. This is where an agent running the business autonomously comes in.
And even then if you’re not satisfied with the backend API for each vertical, these Next apps can be forked and adapted to tightly fit your business instead of you messing with configs, you can make the app your own.
Thanks for the feedback haha I’ll add it to the navbar so it’s easy to find for others.
Yes, it’s built on the shoulders of giants, Next.js[0] and lesser-known Keystone.js[1].
Next is a full stack framework and Keystone is a CMS built on top of Prisma and GraphQL. Keystone was created by this Australian company called Thinkmill. They have used it to help businesses build custom backend systems for more than a decade. But it needed to be deployed separately from Next and they were using emotion css for their dashboard and I wanted to use Tailwind/Shadcn. So first, I had to make the Next Keystone Starter that brought in Keystone into Next so each SaaS is just 1 Next app with a built-in storefront, GraphQL API, and dashboard.
Once that was built (and it took a while tbh), I started to build the Shopify and Toast alternative. But the itch to get these built quickly and autonomously had me working on the harness in the past months and now that is nearly complete.
Here is the e-commerce[2] and restaurant[3] repos. They have a link to deployed demos you can check out as well.
As far as revenue, I don’t feel comfortable relaying that right now. We have other revenue streams like fractional CTO where companies give us equity to manage all their tech and that is quite hard to quantify. Before Openfronts being built, I built Openship, and e-commerce OMS and that has exceeded 5M orders processed since its inception in 2019. That’s not counting orders by businesses running it on-prem.
I actually posted about this vision on HN[4] when I launched Openship and the response is what kept me building.
2. https://github.com/openshiporg/openfront