[switz]

This is pretty fascinating and comes with some complicated AI-world incentives that I've been ruminating on lately. The better you document your work, the stronger contracts you define, the easier it is for someone to clone your work. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing open source commercial work bend towards the SQLite model (open core, private tests). There's no way Cloudflare could have pulled this off without next's very own tests.

Speaking more about the framework itself, the only real conclusion I have here is that I feel server components are a misunderstood and under-utilized pattern and anyone attempting to simplify their DX is a win in my book.

Next is very complex, largely because it has incrementally grown and kept somewhat backwards compatible. A framework that starts from the current API surface and grows can be more malleable and make some tough decisions here at the outset.

Crazy to see it's already being run on a .gov domain[0]. TTFGOV as a new adoption metric?

[0] https://www.cio.gov/

[anematode]

> The better you document your work, the stronger contracts you define, the easier it is for someone to clone your work.

Well said; this is my thinking as well. One person or organization can do the hard work of testing multiple approaches to the API, establishing and revising best practices, and developing an ecosystem. Then once things are fairly stable and well-understood, another person can just yoink it.

I have little empathy for Vercel, and here they're kind of being hoist by their own petard of inducing frustration in people who don't use their hosting; but I'm concerned about how smaller-scale projects (including copyleft ones) will be laundered and extinguished.

[judahmeek]

> Then once things are fairly stable and well-understood, another person can just yoink it.

That transparency & availability for community contributions or forks is the point of open-source.

If you're only using open-source as marketing because you're bad at marketing, then you should probably go closed source & find a non-technical business partner.

Whoever "yoinks" the package runs into the same problem because they now have to build credibility somehow to actually profit from it.

[falcor84]

> There's no way Cloudflare could have pulled this off without next's very own tests.

I'm very uncovinced. History showed us very complex systems reverse engineered without access to the source code. With access to the source code, coupled with the rapid iteration of AI, I don't see any real moat here; at best a slight delay.

[seddonm1]

I have tried to post this here but it has not got traction.

I have a demonstrated process here on my blog (all hand written without AI).

This bit about how to brute force decompilation: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...

And this about how to do the conversion and address the LLM hallucination problem: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf...

Yes, it is absolutely possible.

[anematode]

Source code is one thing; tests covering the codebase are another.

And if you just copy the source code or translate it one-to-one into a new language, rather than make a behavioral copy, there will be copyright issues.

[root_axis]

The tests are absolutely essential, otherwise there's no signal to guide the LLM towards correct behavior and hallucinations accumulate until any hope of forward progress collapses.

[ctoth]

> I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing open source commercial work bend towards the SQLite model (open core, private tests).

Wouldn't this just mean that actual open source is the tests? or spec? or ... The artifact which acts as seed for the program, what ever that ends up being?

[dboreham]

The point is that artifact is not open.

[dboreham]

I'm not sure about this. LLMs can extract both documentation and tests from bare source code. That said I think you're correct that having an existing quality test suite to run against is a huge help.