What David Heinemeier Hansson thinks about open source
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.
David Heinemeier Hansson did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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26 dated positions, 2021 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what David Heinemeier Hansson has said — not written or endorsed by them.
Our readingThe line held throughout is that open source owes its users nothing beyond the gift: using a project confers no say in its direction, and there is no funding crisis to solve. Under it runs a stated motive, a loathing of asking permission, which is also how agents get read as advancing the mission.
Their wordsUsing open source software does not entitle you to a vote on the direction of the project. The gift you've received is the software itself and the freedom of use granted by the license.
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Their wordsOpen source is a great technique for aiding and accelerating it.
- 11 days earlier
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Our readingLovely computers can have much more life in them if they are run on an efficient operating system.
Their wordsBut these are lovely computers that have so much more life in them if we only feed them an efficient OS.
- 5 weeks earlier
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Their wordsBut it actually means that if you take the median programmer and their pull requests towards an average open source project, they're already getting outclassed by agents. I would rather get an agent-written pull request to one of my projects than I'd get one written by a human, and it's not just because the quality's better. It's also because I feel a lot less bad if I just reject it.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 8th of 41 in this recording
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Their wordsSo, in my opinion, this is the absolute best time to ever have been an open source software maintainer. Not only do we get this wealth of glorious pull requests made by agents with all the boxes ticked, we also get to tap into a creativity of people who did not have access to contribute to a project before.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 9th of 41 in this recording
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Our reading · no longer heldAn open-weight model is already all anyone needs; it is as good as the frontier models.
Recalls holdingWhen I was instructing the agent, I was like, "Oh my God, Kimi's just as good as these other models."
SaidBut I've been wrong about this before.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux | Lex Fridman Podcast #501youtube.com 29th of 41 in this recording
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsThere's not this two-tier system where, well, there's Apple or Windows and they make the real thing and then you can try to hack or patch your little thing around it and it's going to look second tier, it always does.
↗Is Linux the perfect operating system? - Omarchy interview with DHHyoutube.com 2nd of 6 in this recording
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordswe desperately need strong open-weight models to protect ourselves against this kind of soft ideological tyranny
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsYou do owe me just a modicum of respect to look at this more than 5 minutes before you just dump your shitty ideas onto me or even worse, it's not so much about the ideas, it's when people try to tell me what to do.
↗DHH: How to Build a Profitable Company Without Losing Controlyoutube.com 11th of 27 in this recording
- 8 weeks earlier
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Their wordsAgents aren't perfect, slop is a problem, but giving more people the power to enjoy malleable computers is undoubtedly a huge win for the founding vision of open source.
- 10 months earlier
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Their wordsArch has been around for twenty years, but with Hyprland on top, it's been catapulted in front of an entirely new audience. Folks who'd never thought that open source could be able to deliver a desktop experience worth giving up Windows or macOS for.
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsI make sure that when I release the first version of any new thing I work on, it's a little broken. It's a little busted in ways that invite people to come in and help me. Because there's no easier way to get the collaboration of other programmers than to put something out that they know how to fix and improve.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 4th of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsThis is also why I reject this notion that open source is in some sort of crisis. That there's a funding crisis that we have to spend more. No, we don't. Open source has never been doing better. Open source has never controlled more domains in software than it has right now.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 41st of 36 in this recording
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Their wordsyou can't show up after you've given the gift of free software to the world and then say, now that you've used that gift, you actually owe me a huge slide of your business because you got too successful using the thing I gave you for free. You don't get to take a gift back.
↗DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting | Lex Fridman Podcast #474youtube.com 42nd of 36 in this recording
- 11 days earlier
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Their wordsSo, it shouldn't really startle me or surprise me that Linux is able to create a not just competitive but superior desktop experience to something like the Mac in a whole host of areas. Not in all of them.
↗DHH discusses Linux and Omarchyyoutube.com 2nd of 9 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd if there's a one thread that goes through my entire career, it's just an absolute loathing of asking anyone for permission about anything.
↗DHH discusses Linux and Omarchyyoutube.com 5th of 9 in this recording
- 9 months earlier
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Our readingOpen source is not a democracy
Their wordsOpen source is not a democracy, and we all benefit from that fact, whether we accept it or not
↗Open source royalty and mad kingsworld.hey.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our readingWeaponizing open source code registries is something we simply cannot allow to form precedence
Their wordsWeaponizing open source code registries is something we simply cannot allow to form precedence
↗Open source royalty and mad kingsworld.hey.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsI do think open source is a cheat code and that doesn't mean that everyone has to have
↗DHH Is Right About Everythingyoutube.com 11th of 8 in this recording
- 4 months earlier
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Their wordsUsing open source software does not entitle you to a vote on the direction of the project. The gift you've received is the software itself and the freedom of use granted by the license.
↗Open source is neither a community nor a democracyworld.hey.com
- 7 months earlier
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Their wordsThe primary crisis, if there is one, is mismatched expectations between givers and receivers
- 12 months earlier
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Their wordsBecause someone can autocomplete a method or even a class, we're going to lose open source communities, where people collaborate on shared software, report bugs, and build on each others' work? How?
↗The scarcity scarecrows of Open Sourceworld.hey.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsIsn't this partly why we share our code to begin with? To enable others to remix, reuse, and regenerate with?
↗The scarcity scarecrows of Open Sourceworld.hey.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 8 months earlier
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Their wordsYou can't easily do that if your feature has been chopped into itty bitty pieces as independent pull requests
↗The advantages of large, long-running pull requestsworld.hey.com
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsApple has, perhaps inadvertently, just revealed to the world how they might go from a three-trillion dollar company to a hundred-trillion dollar company
↗Apple reveals road map to tax any business with an app at 27%world.hey.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 8 weeks earlier
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Our reading · no longer heldOpen source projects should adopt the commercial software playbook to compete for attention, and that professionalization is unequivocally good for open source.
Recalls holdingI used to think that this was unequivocally a win for open source. That to fight for attention with the commercial alternatives, we had to adopt the commercial playbook. Now I think it’s at the very least a mixed blessing.
SaidI used to think that this was unequivocally a win for open source. That to fight for attention with the commercial alternatives, we had to adopt the commercial playbook. Now I think it’s at the very least a mixed blessing.
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Their wordsNow, I’m not saying that there’s something categorically wrong with developing open source on market-based terms. What I’m saying is that it isn’t a necessary condition of sustainability.