Open Source and AI:
A New Model for Sharing Software

At some point after I built my first app with Claude Code, I had to make a decision: what do I do with it?

The obvious move, the one everyone defaults to, would be to put it on the App Store, add a subscription tier, maybe run some ads. Software has value. People pay for software. Why wouldn't I?

But the moment I asked that question seriously, the answer felt obvious: I hadn't written it.

The question of credit

There's something philosophically uncomfortable about charging for work you didn't do. Not in a legal sense — there's no law against profiting from AI-generated code. But in a personal, instinctive sense, it felt wrong.

I had the idea. I had the vision. I spent time refining, directing, testing. That counts for something. But the actual craft — the thousands of lines of code, the architecture decisions, the implementation details — that was Claude Code. Charging for that felt like claiming credit for someone else's work.

"If the AI is the author, I'm the editor and the publisher. Publishers release books. They don't pretend they wrote them."

What open source means in this context

Open source software has always been built on the idea that knowledge should be shared freely. The code you write, you give away, and in doing so you contribute to a commons that everyone benefits from. In the traditional model, this was a sacrifice — your time, your expertise, given freely.

With AI-generated code, that sacrifice is different. My time investment is real — the thinking, the prompting, the iteration. But the implementation cost was near zero in conventional terms. Charging for it would be double-dipping: taking the benefit of AI-generated code (the speed, the scale, the cost reduction) while also asking users to pay as if it were hard-won expertise.

Open source just felt right. More than right — it felt like the only honest choice.

What this enables

When you remove monetization from the equation, something interesting happens: you start building differently. You stop asking "will this make money?" and start asking "is this useful? Is this interesting? Does this make something better?"

Those are better questions. They lead to better apps.

It also means anyone can build on what I've made. Fork it, modify it, learn from it. If my work inspires someone else to build something, that's a better outcome than a few subscription dollars.

The real value

I've come to think that the most valuable thing about Resonant Labs isn't any individual app. It's the proof of concept. The demonstration that this is possible — that a non-developer with ideas and a good AI partner can ship real, working software.

If that proof changes how even a few people think about what they can build, that's worth more than any revenue I could have generated. Ideas, freed up and multiplied, are the real output here.

Give the code away. Keep the ideas flowing.