Honestly, this could be referring to most open-source projects. I’d imagine many of the popular ones were originally made to solve a problem for themselves and then everyone jumps onboard with that solution.
Linux itself also kinda fits here considering it was meant to just sort of be a small project in the beginning and I doubt Linus ever could have predicted what it became.
I have a tiny php library for a somewhat popular framework. It was made so a company could protect a very old database and certain tables. It started as a one off 9 years ago. It was one php file of less than 50 lines.
As of this month it has been downloaded 2 million times. I still can't believe its been used this much. And I'm the only maintainer. If I wanted to I could ruin a lot of peoples days. But I won't.
In a couple of decades, we are going to have large swaths of code that will outlive its creators being used on essential infrastructure.
"most" is a bit strong. Many open source projects never get users or any kind of traction, they're just a passion project for the author. The lucky few fill a need and take off. Review the package usage count on npm or the GitHub stars for projects - there's a tiny fraction that make it big.
To be fair, you can also somewhat steer whether it will take off as a dev, by how you promote it and how much time you take to make it easily usable by others. Many devs really don't care to have their passion projects take off, because it means you'll likely spend less time doing your passion thing, more time doing user support.
one morning my wife and I were talking about Penis Pumps. Then I left for work, got annoyed with managing how many different AWS account credentials I had to manage in my dev-box terminal, and wrote a script to manage it for me.
I named my script PPump because lmao. My team lead saw me use it one day, logged into my dev-box and took the script and published it to our internal GitLab without knowing why I named it PPump.
Now one year later our entire office has PPump baked into the default devbox image. Every day people penis pump into their AWS accounts. They have no idea and I can't ever say anything about it.
I don't know what the source is, but I remember seeing the "AI" bit first, and then a bit later people started editing it more and more, escalating things. I'd check sites like knowyourmeme if I wasn't lazy right now.
Many moons ago I did a project at uni where we implemented elliptic curve cryptography in Java and released it as open source. Unsurprisingly, we had no idea what we were doing. Some years later I get a random mail from someone using it on some embedded system...
I don't want to know, and I fear that ist is paramount that I maintain plausible deniability 😂♥️🙏
33 Comments
BodyPower@lemmy.world · 48 pts · 243d
What are being referenced here?
otacon239@lemmy.world · 111 pts · 243d
Honestly, this could be referring to most open-source projects. I’d imagine many of the popular ones were originally made to solve a problem for themselves and then everyone jumps onboard with that solution.
Linux itself also kinda fits here considering it was meant to just sort of be a small project in the beginning and I doubt Linus ever could have predicted what it became.
mesamunefire@piefed.social · 87 pts · 243d
I have a tiny php library for a somewhat popular framework. It was made so a company could protect a very old database and certain tables. It started as a one off 9 years ago. It was one php file of less than 50 lines.
As of this month it has been downloaded 2 million times. I still can't believe its been used this much. And I'm the only maintainer. If I wanted to I could ruin a lot of peoples days. But I won't.
In a couple of decades, we are going to have large swaths of code that will outlive its creators being used on essential infrastructure.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 242d
Which one?
mesamunefire@piefed.social · 20 pts · 242d
Laravel.
wibble@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 241d
Whelp.
sbv@sh.itjust.works · 21 pts · 242d
"most" is a bit strong. Many open source projects never get users or any kind of traction, they're just a passion project for the author. The lucky few fill a need and take off. Review the package usage count on npm or the GitHub stars for projects - there's a tiny fraction that make it big.
mech@feddit.org · 21 pts · 242d
Considering that making it big just means a lot of responsibility, angry messages, AI-driven bug reports and still no pay, I wouldn't call them lucky.
stephen01king@piefed.zip · 5 pts · 242d
I would, sarcastically.
Ephera@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 242d
To be fair, you can also somewhat steer whether it will take off as a dev, by how you promote it and how much time you take to make it easily usable by others. Many devs really don't care to have their passion projects take off, because it means you'll likely spend less time doing your passion thing, more time doing user support.
HellieSkellie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 93 pts · 242d
one morning my wife and I were talking about Penis Pumps. Then I left for work, got annoyed with managing how many different AWS account credentials I had to manage in my dev-box terminal, and wrote a script to manage it for me.
I named my script PPump because lmao. My team lead saw me use it one day, logged into my dev-box and took the script and published it to our internal GitLab without knowing why I named it PPump.
Now one year later our entire office has PPump baked into the default devbox image. Every day people penis pump into their AWS accounts. They have no idea and I can't ever say anything about it.
Anyway this meme speaks to me in primordial ways.
zqwzzle@lemmy.ca · 71 pts · 242d
Probably the original xkcd of this.
Jayjader@jlai.lu · 13 pts · 242d
That's such a great riff on the original xkcd
Do you remember where you found it?
zqwzzle@lemmy.ca · 12 pts · 242d
Pretty sure lemmy a few months back.
Edit: went to search my upvotes, only a month back.
https://lemmy.ca/post/55566100
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 242d
2025 has been a long decade
zqwzzle@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 242d
It’s felt like a decade every year since the before times.
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de · 10 pts · 242d
I don't know what the source is, but I remember seeing the "AI" bit first, and then a bit later people started editing it more and more, escalating things. I'd check sites like knowyourmeme if I wasn't lazy right now.
stephen01king@piefed.zip · 10 pts · 242d
What's the thing at the very bottom?
SanguineBrah@lemmy.sdf.org · 19 pts · 242d
Shark biting an undersea cable
Flipper@feddit.org · 17 pts · 242d
Libxml would fit the description. In every browser and system and the maintainer just stepped down.
mech@feddit.org · 12 pts · 242d
...and two others have stepped up before he actually quit.
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libxml2/-/commit/214fb814223614d13d44f1465302c3cbd7d1395a
https://hackaday.com/2025/12/23/libxml2-narrowly-avoids-becoming-unmaintained/
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 243d
Literally every hack ever
ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com · 20 pts · 242d
POC is actually just short for Production (that) Occasionally Crashes
velindora@lemmy.cafe · 9 pts · 243d
Anyone’s dependencies because they are too lazy to learn to code basic things
Thorry@feddit.org · 47 pts · 242d
Lmao and I can tell you who gets to support that weird hacked together kinda janky piece of infrastructure!
ripcord@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 242d
Who?
ripcord@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 242d
Wait is it me
zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com · 22 pts · 242d
Made the mistake of speaking up, same as volunteering
onlinepersona@programming.dev · 12 pts · 242d
Unpaid and using an MIT license so that the megacorps dont contribute back? Golly, I wonder who that would be!
kamstrup@programming.dev · 27 pts · 242d
Many moons ago I did a project at uni where we implemented elliptic curve cryptography in Java and released it as open source. Unsurprisingly, we had no idea what we were doing. Some years later I get a random mail from someone using it on some embedded system...
I don't want to know, and I fear that ist is paramount that I maintain plausible deniability 😂♥️🙏
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 242d
mag37@lemmy.ml · 10 pts · 242d
So true 😂 Both at work and private side projects 👏
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 242d
What is it with obscure and dark tv shows as a template?