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Building in Private: Why I'm Not Shipping Until It's Right

· 12 min read
Nathan Riley
Nathan Riley
Lead Developer

"Build in public" has become gospel in the developer community. Share your journey. Get feedback early. Iterate with users. Ship fast, fix later.

I'm doing the opposite. Sigilweaver has been in private development for months, and it won't go public until mid-2026 at the earliest. The GitHub repo is private. I have zero users. And I think this is exactly right for what I'm building.

This isn't contrarianism for its own sake. It's a deliberate strategy for building infrastructure software that needs to be correct on the first try.

TL;DR
  • Early users lock you into bad paradigms - You can't refactor foundations when people depend on them
  • Beta warnings don't prevent pain - Users don't care about disclaimers when their workflows break
  • Infrastructure gets one chance - Sophisticated users won't give you a second look after a botched launch
  • Private building is deep work - No community management, no context switching, just building
  • The launch becomes an event - First impression is the finished product, not the scaffolding

Building Sustainable Open Source: Legal Structure, Licensing, and the Long Game

· 19 min read
Nathan Riley
Nathan Riley
Lead Developer

Most open source projects fail not because the code is bad, but because the maintainers burn out or run out of money. We encounter this problem frequently in the ecosystem. We represent Sigilweaver as a long-term project, and that requires deliberate choices about legal structure, licensing, and business model from day one - not as an afterthought when GitHub stars hit 10k.

This post outlines the model we are using. It's not the only way, but it's one that balances sustainability with open source values. We are sharing this in detail so other maintainers can use it as a template.

TL;DR
  • PropCo/OpCo split: Separate entities for IP (PropCo) and operations (OpCo) for liability isolation
  • AGPL + Commercial dual licensing: Open source for community, paid licenses for enterprises
  • CLA with reversion clause: Contributors assign IP, but it auto-reverts if PropCo closes the source or sells to a for-profit
  • Start strong, can relax later: You can relicense from AGPL → MIT, but never MIT → AGPL allows forking the last MIT version.
  • Set up an LLC early: Code signing on Windows requires a 3-year-old business entity