When a popular, free and open source passion project led by a single dev moves into the hands of a company that needs to sustain its 30-people team [0], you know what happens next.
AnkiHub's modus operandi has been to take over communities or projects where free exchange happens and monetize/paywall them. If you've been a part of the /r/medicalschoolanki subreddit, you know exactly what I mean. It's been hollowed out completely.
In the post, AnkiHub mentions how Anki is "sacred" to them. Yet, they have had no qualms entrenching themselves into Anki's settings menu as the only third-party ever to do so. [1] I am sure more is to come. And the language used in their post almost never helps their case, especially in the pricing and OSS sections.
I understand why Damien felt he was being a bottleneck in Anki's development. This is similar to what was happening with Bram and Vim. Ultimately, the community forked and built Neovim. Gorhill had also similarly transferred uBlock, but then came back and built uBlock Origin. So the precedents are there for a successful community-run or leader-run spinoff.
Syncing is sure to become a paid feature, and access to shared decks too.
Creating a fork pointed to a hosted version of Sync Server [2], and an alternative hub where people can share decks other than AnkiWeb [3] is paramount. As well as saving and preserving all of the decks there, as they are sure to go behind a paywall.
I, and I am sure many other HNers, would be willing to support that with our time and financially.
Thank you, I appreciate your view. What you said about my "projects" makes perfect sense. My projects are likely not focused enough, and some are definitely upside down. I am currently going through the articles you have sent. Thanks again!
Thank you for the tip, really appreciate it. I do think in the long run, the best way to use my "generalist" powers would be to do something where I am forced to know a bit of everything like entrepreneurship or content creation. That's likely where I need to turn to.
Hi Adam, thank you for your comment. Comments like yours are exactly the reason why I chose to talk about this in a public forum, so that I could get an external point of view.
Sometimes going on a while without talking about things to people can get you in an internal feedback loop where you lose touch with reality. Your point of view is refreshing to see -- it just so happens I love messing around with LaTeX, and I did think of that, just never made it happen. I will. I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of benefit these little 'self-books' will bring. Thank you!
I have now gotten both books and I will read them. I appreciate the recommendations.
I definitely agree getting an evaluation can't hurt, and the sooner the better. It could save me years of blaming myself for just the way my brain is wired. Thank you for sharing your experiences with me.
Thank you saruken, your comment really hits close to home. I'm glad to know that, at least, I'm not the only one living this problem.
I especially liked the part about trusting your old self, I think you managed to vocalize something I've been thinking for a while but that I could never form into words. I need to trust my old self, and trust that they chose that project for a reason. Now that I look back at it, whenever I find an excuse to stop the project, it's because I grow mistrustful of my old self.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I do live with my partner as well, but we never 'seriously' tried something like this, where we keep each other accountable. This looks like it might help. Whenever I start something new, I should make it so that others know it so that I'm accontable. Thank you!
Starting small seems to be really helpful as far as I've been able to see in the comments. I will keep that to heart, and I'll commit to making a super small project this very weekend. Thank you, and best of luck for your upcoming game!
I had never thought of it that way. Project coherency looks like a great metric/mission to keep in mind as I go about a project. Am I doing this to learn, or am I dong this to do X? Thank you.
Thank you. It does appear that motivation gets you going in the short term, but it's discipline that gets you going in the long term. I need to seriously cultivate an appreciation and a skill for discipline, so that I can keep going even when the initial rush wears out.
Guilt definitely plays a part. Whenever I'm not 'working' on the next great thing, I do feel like I should. I should just take it easy for a while and really re-evaluate what I want to do and what I don't. Thank you!
That's exactly it -- if you stick to some stuff, at least there is a chance, however small, that you'll accomplish or finish something. If you don't, that chance is reduced to 0.
The initial rush gives tons of dopamine, I need to find a way to persist even after the dopamine has worn off. Continuing a project has its own benefits and points of pleasure, I just need to start gaining an appreciation for those benefits and start getting pleasure from sticking to things. Thank you for the comment, I loved your story and appreciate you sharing it with me.
Decoupling the 'satisfaction' from the project itself is something I need to learn. I need to be able to stick to things even beyond 'the horizon,' after they stopped providing the dopamine hit. This is the main hurdle. Thank you for your comment, I'll keep it to heart.
At this point, at least in my career, the ability to learn new things is my ability and 'selling' point. While I do understand this has great benefits and that there's few people like this, one can't help but wonder what being a specialist would bring. I should perhaps be less harsh on myself and reframe what I've done so far as being 'succesful'... with processes. Thank you!
Committing to a daily/weekly absolute minimum looks really helpful. Back in June I committed to writing a blog post a week and somehow, I managed to stick with it even though sometimes the posts ended up being written in a rush two hours before publication.
I should be taking advantage of this system more. Thank you.
AnkiHub's modus operandi has been to take over communities or projects where free exchange happens and monetize/paywall them. If you've been a part of the /r/medicalschoolanki subreddit, you know exactly what I mean. It's been hollowed out completely.
In the post, AnkiHub mentions how Anki is "sacred" to them. Yet, they have had no qualms entrenching themselves into Anki's settings menu as the only third-party ever to do so. [1] I am sure more is to come. And the language used in their post almost never helps their case, especially in the pricing and OSS sections.
I understand why Damien felt he was being a bottleneck in Anki's development. This is similar to what was happening with Bram and Vim. Ultimately, the community forked and built Neovim. Gorhill had also similarly transferred uBlock, but then came back and built uBlock Origin. So the precedents are there for a successful community-run or leader-run spinoff.
Syncing is sure to become a paid feature, and access to shared decks too.
Creating a fork pointed to a hosted version of Sync Server [2], and an alternative hub where people can share decks other than AnkiWeb [3] is paramount. As well as saving and preserving all of the decks there, as they are sure to go behind a paywall.
I, and I am sure many other HNers, would be willing to support that with our time and financially.
[0] https://www.ankihub.net/about-us [1] https://github.com/ankitects/anki/pull/3232 [2] https://docs.ankiweb.net/sync-server.html [3] https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks