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worldsoup | 1 year ago
>Single vendor isn’t a reasonable way to do Open Source and resist evil proprietary software. It’s just another way to do proprietary software.
>proprietary software is not evil. It’s just inferior.
Based on these statements the author would have you believe there is no value in commercial/proprietary software and we should just never develop it. All software should be open and collaborative. That is obviously silly. While open source software is great, many incredible software innovations and truly valuable software comes from proprietary companies. In fact, these companies are typically the ones that make the large open source ecosystem possible by making massive donations in developer hours as well as cash to orgs like linux foundation.
The interesting discussion is in whether commercial software should be closed source or source available with restrictions. The days of building propriety, VC backed infrastructure software with a traditional permissible license are over and likely never coming back.
sanderjd|1 year ago
Thank you!
The author carefully uses the term "proprietary software", drawing no distinction between whether it is closed source or source available, as if that distinction is totally beside the point. But for me, as someone who makes software, there is a huge distinction between those two things!
I really hate using tools that I can't read the source of. Just recently I traced some documentation on how python garbage collection works into the implementation for that particular thing in the particular version of the language that I'm using. If python were a single-vendor source-available tool, that would be a bummer and I'd be less likely to use it, but it wouldn't actually affect my work much. But if it were closed source, that would absolutely be a deal breaker for me. I need to be able to go look and see how my tools work, otherwise I'm blind.
I do agree with the author that community-driven open source is better, and I consider projects like the Linux Foundation, BSD, GNU, Apache, CNCF, etc. to be wonderful miraculous gifts. But I also worry that a distressing proportion of the most important software I use has been built on the backs of a series of absurdly under-compensated and eventually burnt-out passionate nerds, and I can't stand that. So I'm sympathetic to a model that has a more obvious (to me) path to creating software tooling that I can use without flying blind, while compensating people adequately for their work.
simoncion|1 year ago
> Based on these statements the author would have you believe there is no value in commercial/proprietary software and we should just never develop it.
Do you believe that there is no value in inferior products and that they should never be developed?
I certainly don't, and it's clear to me that the Carrez does not, either.
If I have the option, and can afford to do so, I will select the superior product. But if there is no option, or I cannot afford the superior product, I will accept the inferior one and be better off than if I had no product at all.
coloneltcb|1 year ago