I love your work on bun. How do you feel about all the constant concerns being raised about the quality of the project lately? I understand some of them might just be typical twitter hate but some of them are real. And I think people are right to question why you are adding image processing or web views inside a javascript runtime when there are bugs affecting production that sit unaddressed. For example on of our biggest blockers right now is https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/issues/6608 which was reported in 2023, still affecting us 3 years later.
When you start getting hate, you’ve made it. Up until then you’re a hypothetical that people like. Maybe they’ve built a side project with you or read the docs. You only get hate when people have used your tool and butted up against limitations. We saw this with Deno too where they went from beloved potential savior to realistic, limited tool. Hate is good. It means people rely on you
Do you know which project gets the most hate? Nodejs, so in that sense, Nodejs has made it and it is widely deployed but this hate was the reason that two seperate alternatives for Node have emerged as Deno and bun.
Recently Bun's latest version had memory leaks which crashed production code from my understanding and their attitude[0] of saying OSS will have no human contribution allowed, now doing these ports of zig to rust, going back for years what the decision making of using zig was and this code basically being vibed as there is no way that they are reviewing the code while being VC funded/bought by anthropic.
These are all genuine issues which cause hate. You can say people are hating because people rely on it but the true thing is that also seems like a bait and switch and that people switched from node.js to bun (maybe even being locked inside bun), only for them to do these highly questionable decisions which is the reason why people are starting to hate on bun.
Atleast that's my interpretation right now reading this whole thread.
Well yeah, it's in Zig, not a memory-safe language, so of course I'd expect memory leaks. That's why I haven't seriously used bun and instead use a runtime that actually is in a memory-safe language, Deno in Rust. It's like wearing roller skates without brakes and wondering why you keep running into things.
This is getting stupid. Now one can’t even make a reasonable polite question with praise without being asked if they pay.
Bun raised millions of dollars and was acquired by a commercial entity which bragged in the same blog post of reaching $1B. They’re not a guy with an eyepatch and a tin can out on the street.
Open-source developers should be compensated, but they don’t have to be. You can’t reasonably offer your work for free then complain someone isn’t paying you. If you want to be paid, charge for it.
Signed: A long time open-source developer who has dedicated years of full-time work to useful projects without compensation or raising VC money or being acquired.
Come on, whenever a project is discussed on hackernews, there is always one comment of "why are you working on X, when you should be fixing bug Y?!".
We are all software engineers on here (or at least many of us are), we all know how project management and prioritisation works right? We can't work on everything all at once.
given the alleged context, X being something "reported in 2023, still affecting us 3 years later", is this not a reasonable PM / priority decision to question?
> Come on, whenever a project is discussed on hackernews, there is always one comment of "why are you working on X, when you should be fixing bug Y?!".
That is not what the question is about, which you’ll see if you engage with it properly in good faith. There is a single question in the comment (indicated, as one does in English, by a question mark):
> How do you feel about all the constant concerns being raised about the quality of the project lately?
Everything else is context and opinion to explain the question.
I do know why your post is downvoted, and I disagree with it. Here is my upvote.
I read the link that you shared. This is genius. To quote:
> Community backed
> Fody requires significant effort to maintain. As such it relies on financial support to ensure its long term viability.
> It is expected that all developers using Fody become a Patron on OpenCollective.
I can remember years ago reading some posts/writings from none other than Richard Stallman (yeah, that guy). He was talking about charging people for a copy of the source code to your open source project. At the time, I thought it was weird and did not make sense. This is basically the same thing but in 2026. After watching so much bullshit around open source projects (basically, assholes expecting free service for whining the loudest), I have come to the conclusion that "money talks" and helps to realign incentives that are warped by open source.
Are you being ironic or serious? I can see both pros (encourage people to see themselves as customers) and cons (less initial adoption) to the licensing, although I'd maybe leave bug issues open for everybody.
Serious. And although 'seeing yourself as a customer' certainly makes things slightly better, I'm also referring just to the amount of cash that enters the coffers once it's no longer a tip jar per se. It is open source on the subject of copyright, but as was described in an article on here the other day, open-source doesn't mean community. By positioning the community aspect as something you have to buy into to enter, you end up (a) selling a product for cash without compromising open source and (b) ensuring everyone you deal with is serious. It's like the Red Hat model but workable at the lower end of software at the expense of lower upside.
