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Cal.com is going closed source

cal.com

1–10 of 337 posts

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#3
This is a weird knee-jerk reaction. I feel like this is more a business decision than a security decision.

I feel like with AI, self-hosting software reliably is becoming easier so the incentives to pay for a hosted service of an OSS project are going down.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#5
post #4

I get the mentality but it feels very much like security through obscurity. When did we decide that that was the correct model?

hey cofounder here. since it takes my 16 year old neighbors son 15 mins and $100 claude code credits to hack your open source project

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#6
This seems kind of crazy. If LLMs are so stunningly good at finding vulnerabilities in code, then shouldn't the solution be to run an LLM against your code after you commit, and before you release it? Then you basically have pentesting harnesses all to yourself before going public. If an LLM can't find any flaws, then you are good to release that code.

A few years ago, I invoked Linus's Law in a classroom, and I was roundly debunked. Isn't it a shame that it's basically been fulfilled now with LLMs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_law

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#7
post #4

I get the mentality but it feels very much like security through obscurity. When did we decide that that was the correct model?

hey cofounder here. since it takes my 16 year old neighbors son 15 mins and $100 claude code credits to hack your open source project

Right, but those capabilities are available to you as well. Granted the remediation effort will take longer but...you're going to do that for any existing issues _anyway_ right?

I understand why this is a tempting thing to do in a "STOP THE PRESSES" manner where you take a breather and fix any existing issues that snuck through. I don't yet understand why when you reach steady-state, you wouldn't rely on the same tooling in a proactive manner to prevent issues from being shipped.

And if you say "yeah, that's obv the plan," well then I don't understand what going closed-source _now_ actually accomplishes with the horses already out of the barn.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#8
You know what?

Great move.

Open-source supporters don't have a sustainable answer to the fact that AI models can easily find N-day vulnerabilities extremely quickly and swamp maintainers with issues and bug-reports left hanging for days.

Unfortunately, this is where it is going and the open-source software supporters did not for-see the downsides of open source maintenance in the age of AI especially for businesses with "open-core" products.

Might as well close-source them to slow the attackers (with LLMs) down. Even SQLite has closed-sourced their tests which is another good idea.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#9
post #4

I get the mentality but it feels very much like security through obscurity. When did we decide that that was the correct model?

hey cofounder here. since it takes my 16 year old neighbors son 15 mins and $100 claude code credits to hack your open source project

Are you at all worried that the message you are spreading here is "We are no longer confident in our own ability to secure your data?"

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#10
post #4

I get the mentality but it feels very much like security through obscurity. When did we decide that that was the correct model?

hey cofounder here. since it takes my 16 year old neighbors son 15 mins and $100 claude code credits to hack your open source project

Couldn't you just spend those $100 on claude code credits yourself and make sure you're not shipping insecure software? Security by obscurity is not the correct model (IMO)
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