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Ask HN: Is closed-source software inherently evil?

3 points by aambertin ↗ HN
So, I have been around for a while, and seen most of the OSS revolution from the moment that the ASF was born. I have seen things take-off from Hibernate “being adopted” by JPA, and .Net generics being brought into Java… and then bought by Oracle, and Oracle suing a bunch of companies… Let alone all the mess with AWS vs Elastic vs MongoDB and so on and so forth.

So without giving me a lecture on the history of OSS and how it helped move the industry forward (which I know it did!)... the flat, straight-on questions are (and let’s let alone pricing, assume its “free” comparatively to the business you are applying it to):

Are closed-source solutions inherently evil and risk-carrying? Why is that? Why would you NOT choose a 10x solution for your use case only because it’s not open-source?

I’m very interested in your personal experience and from which angle did you look at it in such a situation (for example: developers unable to run things locally in a light-weight manner -vs- enterprise architects struggling with lock-in concerns).

Your opinion is very important, but real-life examples would mean a world for me to better understand it :)

13 comments

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aambertin
Your opinion is very important, but real-life examples would mean a world for me to better understand :)
Eridrus
No, lol.

The people who think closed source software is evil are an incrementally small minority of the population who just happen to be very loud about it.

Developers are broadly on the other hand, super cheap, and generally unwilling to pay for software, believing they could write everything themselves and thinking that is always a good use of their time for the business.

aambertin
Thanks @Eridrus! Can you give me some insight into how would you look at it when making a recommendation about it? I don't know you so it's hard to give an example, an old example that comes to mind quickly for me is JBoss vs BEA if you're old enough to remember that xD
Eridrus
I think I have a personal sense of unease when pieces of my systems are proprietary, very hard to replace, and under control of a different entity. But it's really not my primary concern. My primary concern is moving quickly and not spending too much money.

I am a satisfied AWS MemoryDB customer. It's not open source, but I feel more comfortable that it implements a semi-standard protocol (Redis) so if I needed to get off it I could.

I am also a satisfied customer of Doppler. I briefly looked at Hashicorp's Vault product, but that was just so complicated to use I think the choice of Doppler (or one of their competitors) over Vault is clearly correct for startups. This would be a pain to replace quickly, but fundamentally not that big of a deal, it's just a reliable key value store with a bunch of integrations.

I am still a cheapskate though, like every other developer, we got a quote for Dagster+ for 20k/yr recently, and decided we'd rather keep using self-hosted Prefect.

I think the main takeaway I have from selling software is that selling it to front line developers is a fool's game unless it's cheap and you're going for huge scale. If you want to charge more, you need to sell to someone who has cash, but very indirect leverage over development.

aambertin
That's gold, thanks! So, what I understood from the MemoryDB story is... value-for-money ... and try to avoid lock-in. But -from the Doppler bit-, a "soft" lock-in is acceptable if the price is right.

Did I grossly misread something?

Eridrus
I guess I don't feel super locked in to doppler either; everything takes creds via env vars these days, so it's not even that locked in. But there would be a bit of work to migrate thing, etc, like with everything.

Good value is probably the most important thing; the value could be speed or efficiency or whatever, but that's obviously the first bar.

Open source is not high up on the list of questions.

jarule
No, intellectual property is as evil as nuclear codes, Coke, or Disney. The free software zealots started out as normal guys looking to save a buck and only later came to justify their cheapness with some insane moral legerdemain.
aambertin
I'm not sure I understood your comment... is intellectual property evil? Are the free software guys on the wrong track? The way I read it there is a bit of self-conflicting points in the comment. Can you elaborate a bit for this poor soul?
calobher
No, according to my understanding of what you wrote; however, can you give examples?
aambertin
Well, if you had a closed-source product, let's say a distributed KV-store just to say something ... well, I gotta say Redis in the KV-store example I guess... would you stick with Redis because it's -nowadays "somewhat"- open source even if you could get a several "X" advantage in performance and flexibility for the same buck?

I mean, I understand "why" the rise of "BSL" and similar licenses... some players have been a little bit nasty xD, and that's driving a bunch of younger companies that I have been talking to away from open-source as a mean to protect their products... And I'm curious about the community's perception of running "generous" (as in generally free for small business or tryouts) but not actual "open-source" solutions as part of their stack (as in ASL2, BSD or similar hyper permissive licenses).

PeterZaitsev
No. Not at all. I think there are two main points 1) "Everything being equal" Open Source Software provides more value than proprietary. 2) Most of blowback you see is not about proprietary software but behavior of abuse or "bait and switch", which proprietary companies can practice because they have leverage
aambertin
---"Everything being equal" Open Source Software provides more value than proprietary.---

Where is the added value for the end user in your opinion?

JohnFen
> Are closed-source solutions inherently evil and risk-carrying?

Absolutely not.

> Why would you NOT choose a 10x solution for your use case only because it’s not open-source?

Because software being open source (in the general sense) gives that software an enormous advantage all by itself. Even if proprietary software is "10x", it's still burdened with the rather large disadvantages of being proprietary.

I buy and use proprietary software, but only when it enables me to accomplish something I can't accomplish with open source software. And even then, I'm keeping an eye out to be able to ditch the proprietary solution as quickly as possible.