Ask HN: Does Anyone Use a "Closed Core" Software Model? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Does Anyone Use a "Closed Core" Software Model?

#11

Post by gpm » Wed, Apr 17, 2024, 11:49 PM UTC

Skyrim (mods are open source)?

I'm kidding, sort of, games that rely on "user generated content" often feel like exactly this.

Re: Ask HN: Does Anyone Use a "Closed Core" Software Model?

#12

Post by pclmulqdq » Thu, Apr 18, 2024, 12:20 AM UTC

My tiny company is starting on this philosophy. The core device and our real IP is closed-source, but all the other components around it are open. Going forward, the same sort of thing will apply - almost everything open, except the bits that are actually hard to replicate.

Since the market is security, it makes a lot of sense to open-source as much as possible without compromising our market positioning.

I believe several other security-related companies (Tailscale comes to mind) also adopt this philosophy.

Re: Ask HN: Does Anyone Use a "Closed Core" Software Model?

#13

Post by rst » Thu, Apr 18, 2024, 12:27 AM UTC

pwarner wrote: post #10

mindwok wrote: post #8

Tailscale is another one. The coordination server is closed source but all the clients are open source.

I think Datadog does similar. I always thought it brought benefits to knowing what runs on your machine, and one time we modified it.

Likewise New Relic.