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
Ask HN: Is closed-source software inherently evil?
11–14 of 14 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is closed-source software inherently evil?
#12No. 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
---"Everything being equal" Open Source Software provides more value than proprietary.---
Where is the added value for the end user in your opinion?
Re: Ask HN: Is closed-source software inherently evil?
#13> 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is closed-source software inherently evil?
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ge…
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?
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.