Move tests to closed source repo(github.com)
github.com
Move tests to closed source repo
https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/issues/8082
See also https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/25/closed-tests/
44 comments
Whether this was a joke or a backtracking, or this dared waste your oh so precious time- You're missing the forest for the trees. There's extreme covert and even overt hostility between how people stand on AI's gluttonous usage of the commons.
We're about to waltz into a deep period of tension between developers, and people who, empowered by multimillion dollars corporations, bravely violate developers' copyrights in the hopes of replacing their jobs, while bullying these same developers who dare express their discontent.
This is not gonna end well.
We're about to waltz into a deep period of tension between developers, and people who, empowered by multimillion dollars corporations, bravely violate developers' copyrights in the hopes of replacing their jobs, while bullying these same developers who dare express their discontent.
This is not gonna end well.
Developers never had "intellectual property". Under capitalism, only billion-dollar corporations do. So the problem with AI isn't that it violated some license. The real problems are that people are losing jobs, that the Internet and our community gets clogged up with more low-effort slop competing for our attention than ever before, and that the products we are all forced to use are becoming worse because corporations are trying to shove AI-features into them and put quotas on engineers to vibe-code as much as possible. There are definitely others. "Copyright" is not even scratching the surface of real problems with LLMs, and many of the people leading the charge in pointing out the evil and hypocrisy of AI companies are themselves copyright abolitionists.
This is interesting because it’s also one of SQLite’s monetizations. SQLite is in the public domain, but you need a commercial license to access their TH3 test harness with 100% branch coverage used to validate SQLite on different platforms.
> We’ve sold exactly zero copies of that so that didn’t really work out.
Source: https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/
HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27718701
Source: https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/
HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27718701
This has always struck me as such a strange monetization strategy. Do they actually make money off this?
It works as a fork deterrent; forks can't easily prove they are still correct without the test suite, so if a company needs to tweak SQLite for any reason, they are better off paying for the tests so they know their tweaks won't break anything.
Read the thread, it was a joke.
"Sorry folks, this issue was more of a joke (am I allowed to do that?) but I'll keep the issue open since there's some discussion here."
"Sorry folks, this issue was more of a joke (am I allowed to do that?) but I'll keep the issue open since there's some discussion here."
That's from this comment here: https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/issues/8082#issuecomment-39...
Well that's embarrassing! I reported it as if it wasn't a joke. I thought the joke issue was this one about translating everything to Chinese: https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/issues/8092
Well that's embarrassing! I reported it as if it wasn't a joke. I thought the joke issue was this one about translating everything to Chinese: https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/issues/8092
If it was a joke (the test suite issue), then it was a really shit joke. It reads more like backtracking, I don't think _you_ should feel any embarrassment.
The gag started on Twitter after Cloudflare vibe coded a nextjs replacement clone.
If you know that context and the tweet I feel this is more obvious that it is a joke.
Just because you didn't get the joke, does not make it a really shit joke. The funniest jokes rely on context.
If you know that context and the tweet I feel this is more obvious that it is a joke.
Just because you didn't get the joke, does not make it a really shit joke. The funniest jokes rely on context.
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Sorry Simon, I honestly didn't expect this to be posted anywhere https://x.com/just_be_dev/status/2026419663505072195
Why would they go to all the trouble of summarising the test counts in the context and writing out the full removal scope across two comment posts as a "joke"?
I'd believe it was a joke if was a one-liner but this has far more detail then that.
this issue was more of a joke (am I allowed to do that?)
Not really a fan of the qualification here to possibly scare people off from calling them out either.
To clear, I have no problem with them hiding the repo, I have no problem with them changing their mind after the blowback, but it's frustrating when they can't own these decisions and try to hide behind it being a "joke".
I'd believe it was a joke if was a one-liner but this has far more detail then that.
this issue was more of a joke (am I allowed to do that?)
Not really a fan of the qualification here to possibly scare people off from calling them out either.
To clear, I have no problem with them hiding the repo, I have no problem with them changing their mind after the blowback, but it's frustrating when they can't own these decisions and try to hide behind it being a "joke".
the issue was created by claude using this skill https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/blob/main/.claude/skills/wr...
trust me this was never a serious proposal
trust me this was never a serious proposal
In the interests of transparency it should be noted you are the 4th top contributor to this repo [1].
If that test summary was generated by Claude without intervention it wouldn't have estimation tildes all over the counts.
Why would you bother with any intervention on Claude's output if it was only a joke, wouldn't you just dump the output and move on?
[1]: https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/graphs/contributors
If that test summary was generated by Claude without intervention it wouldn't have estimation tildes all over the counts.
Why would you bother with any intervention on Claude's output if it was only a joke, wouldn't you just dump the output and move on?
[1]: https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/graphs/contributors
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The headline should be changed, because it is moving from one closed source repo to another closed source repo, and on HN misleading headlines tend to be corrected even if they're deliberate on the part of the authors.
simonw correctly describes it as "not technically open source" - though OSI doesn't have the trademark, the term open source, capitalized or not, refers to the what the Open Source Definition codifies. There are other terms such as shared source, for this sort of stuff.
simonw correctly describes it as "not technically open source" - though OSI doesn't have the trademark, the term open source, capitalized or not, refers to the what the Open Source Definition codifies. There are other terms such as shared source, for this sort of stuff.
The headline should be changed because it was a joke: “Sorry folks, this issue was more of a joke (am I allowed to do that?) but I'll keep the issue open since there's some discussion here.”
Maybe we just Jai Tan to provide some fresh test data.
The "this wasted my time" comments are missing the point...
In addition to his great sense of humor, Steve is usually ahead of the curve in terms of trends. There's a lesson in this. LLMs have become incredible constraint solvers ("SAT-solvers for code"). Well-thought-out tests, types, specs, and docs are all incredibly valuable constraints. This has big implications - for example what happens to licenses when you can cheaply rewrite the codebase and therefore unencumber it.
In addition to his great sense of humor, Steve is usually ahead of the curve in terms of trends. There's a lesson in this. LLMs have become incredible constraint solvers ("SAT-solvers for code"). Well-thought-out tests, types, specs, and docs are all incredibly valuable constraints. This has big implications - for example what happens to licenses when you can cheaply rewrite the codebase and therefore unencumber it.
Is it really re-writing - legally - if you are starting from the codebase itself? Not a lawyer, am wondering however if the Google vs Oracle Java lawsuit has some implications for this.
This is concerning, it feels a bit tragedy-of-the-commons I suppose where having public tests are a valuable public good, thought I can't quite get the analogy straight in my head.
> feels a bit tragedy-of-the-commons ... I can't quite get the analogy straight in my head
I have a personal theory that "tragedy of the commons" has a very specific meaning, and beyond this meaning it just adds confusion. This isn't your fault - it's an overused phrase.
I'd try to examine the root of your discomfort. Why does it make you feel bad? Avoid thinking about "big ideas" like the commons or the public good.
I have a personal theory that "tragedy of the commons" has a very specific meaning, and beyond this meaning it just adds confusion. This isn't your fault - it's an overused phrase.
I'd try to examine the root of your discomfort. Why does it make you feel bad? Avoid thinking about "big ideas" like the commons or the public good.
I'm thinking of migrating to ExcaliDraw or Xournal++ next time I need a whiteboard.
The performative closing of public contributions citing the slop scare felt disingenuous from the start. You couldn't be bothered to implement _any_ mitigations that leave the community engaged with the project?
Writing a contributor karma bot, moving to a non-social or obscure git forge (most slop contributors are resume farming and GitHub is the only forge the HR cares about), newbie-unfriendly non-public workflows like git send-mail, or references from Discord... This isn't an AGI on the other side of the screen, planning the perfect strategy to infiltrate your project; it's a sub-script-kiddie trying to fill a portfolio with quick "contributions" doing the more annoying version of "fixing typos" in docs.
The performative closing of public contributions citing the slop scare felt disingenuous from the start. You couldn't be bothered to implement _any_ mitigations that leave the community engaged with the project?
Writing a contributor karma bot, moving to a non-social or obscure git forge (most slop contributors are resume farming and GitHub is the only forge the HR cares about), newbie-unfriendly non-public workflows like git send-mail, or references from Discord... This isn't an AGI on the other side of the screen, planning the perfect strategy to infiltrate your project; it's a sub-script-kiddie trying to fill a portfolio with quick "contributions" doing the more annoying version of "fixing typos" in docs.
We're in chats with the GitHub team, they're taking it really seriously. I consider our pause on contributions similar to pi's open source vacation, we'll figure it out. https://github.com/badlogic/pi-mono/blob/main/packages/codin...
aichen_dev(1)
What a strange joke that wasted the time of so many.
Entitled mentality.
Open source is a comittment. It is entitled of companies to grow developer user bases by promising that they will continue to provide their product to consumers and foster an open community, then pull the rug once openness no longer benefits them. The decision to go open source should less often be guided by financial reasons. It is foremost a social system of distributed labour and dependence.
It's not open source, before or after the (hypothetical) change.
Low quality signals that increase noise
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I wonder if TLDraw realizes that Ai can probably run the software and generate an even better test suite. Days to replicate +1?
Some test suites are gold, and not in the range of days to replicate.
like foundation db probably.
So why the pushback?
If you stay silent, you get walked over. They have reversed the decision [1] from the push back. (I don't buy the "it was a joke")
[1] https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/issues/8082#issuecomment-39...
[1] https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw/issues/8082#issuecomment-39...