
Ask HN: Can I just open source a new technology or should I write a paper? - hsikka
I&#x27;m a master&#x27;s student working on Bio-inspired AI. I&#x27;m making some progress on a new, online architecture that can do some cool things.<p>Is it advisable to write a paper before open sourcing it? Why can&#x27;t I just share my code, and if people care to they can tear it apart or support it?<p>Why would this be any less effective than spending that time writing a paper to submit to a conference?
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LeoSolaris
Open source generally builds slowly. It takes time for communities to coalesce
around new tech in ways that are meaningful. It is worth the effort and time
it takes to keep the software updated.

For faster feedback on the core ideas, a paper would serve very well. You'll
have the attention of your peers and the faculty to gather initial
impressions.

There isn't any reason why you couldn't do both. Open sourcing new ideas
doesn't mean you cannot write a paper on the subject. The code is still your
idea at the core. Refinement of the code doesn't change that fact.

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hsikka
Great points, I think I may be overestimating the speed of Open Source
development in my mind, leading to the mistaken assumption that all my time
should be used rapidly building better tech. If that isn't the case, and
there's bound to be a slow uptake on the OS side, it certainly seems prudent
to shift my attention over to communicating and disseminating my work, perhaps
through a paper.

~~~
___cs____
What I have seen lately is, writing a paper + open sourcing code, would be
more beneficial than doing one thing. At the end, you will be talking to two
communities.

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gumby
Open sourcing your code is a way of "writing a paper" \-- it's a way to get it
out there.

One paper rarely does anything. Likewise one repo. Certainly each can point to
the other which may help someone else to understand what you were trying to
accomplish, and hopefully build upon it.

Regardless of all of the above: making a public repo with an open source
license is a good thing to do if the alternative is for it to be dropped. Back
in the early 80s I wanted to see some code written by one of my advisor's
prior students (for his PhD) back in the late 70s. I had to send him email to
Sweden, where he had since gotten a faculty position, and he sent me a tape!
His code was no longer on MIT backups. All this for what turned out to be me
reading a few functions our of his implementation that explained something I
hadn't understood in his thesis. Had I known, I could have just asked him the
question. Or today, looked at the code on GitHub.

I think you may also get some satisfaction in writing up your work. You can
store the paper in the repo as well, of course, in addition to submitting it
to a journal or giving it at a conference.

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drallison
If your technology is patentable, you may want to patent it and then put the
patent in the public domain to prevent it from being patented by some other
person. Public disclosure does much the same thing but filing a patent is much
more effective.

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batoure
I don't see any reason you can't do both of these things. A benefit to open
sourcing the code might be that it gets feedback from a wider audience beyond
peer review.

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bra-ket
create a landing page first with a "fork me" link to github repo, brief
description,docs/papers and examples of usage

