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Published · transcript-backedSpeaker unverified: belief
12 Jul 2025 Lex Fridman Podcast #474 – DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Ruby on Rails, Productivity & Parenting
“Now, well, I think I learned very early on that a quick way to burn out in open source is to treat it as a business, as though your users are customers, as though they have claims of legitimacy on your time and your attention and your direction.”
— Speaker unverified
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Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Speaker unverified
- Attribution
- Not verified from this transcript
- Claim type
- belief
- Recorded
- 12 Jul 2025
- Publisher
- Lex Fridman Podcast
Transcript context
…Why monarchy is best. It’s great. We should definitely have dictators and they should control everything, especially when the dictator is me. Now, well, I think I learned very early on that a quick way to burn out in open source is to treat it as a business, as though your users are customers, as though they have claims of legitimacy on your time and your attention and your direction. Because I faced this almost immediately with Ruby on Rails. As soon as it was released, there were a million people who had all sorts of opinions about where I ought to take it. And not just opinions, but actually demands. “Unless you implement an Oracle database adapter, this is always going to be a toy.” It was actually more or less that exact demand that prompted me to have a slide at one of the early Rails conferences that just said, “Fuck you.” Yeah, I saw that.…
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