Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cal.com is going closed source

cal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 337 posts

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#11

Post by simonw »

Drew Breunig published a very relevant piece yesterday that came to the opposite conclusion: https://www.dbreunig.com/2026/04/14/cybersecurity-is-proof-o...

Since security exploits can now be found by spending tokens, open source is MORE valuable because open source libraries can share that auditing budget while closed source software has to find all the exploits themselves in private.

> If Mythos continues to find exploits so long as you keep throwing money at it, security is reduced to a brutally simple equation: to harden a system you need to spend more tokens discovering exploits than attackers will spend exploiting them.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#12

Post by [deleted] »

rvz wrote: post #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 w…

[deleted]

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#13

Post by wild_egg »

simonw wrote: post #9
Peer_Rich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"

That's exactly the message I got from the video

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#14

Post by throwaway5752 »

doytch wrote: post #7
Peer_Rich wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 too…

> those capabilities are available to you as well

Give him $100 to obtain that capability.

Give each open source project maintainer $100.

Or internalize the cost if they all decide the hassle of maintaining an open source project is not worth it any more.

I'm not aiming this reply at you specific, but it's the general dynamic of this crisis. The real answer is for the foundational model providers to give this money. But instead, at least one seems to care more about acquiring critical open source companies.

We should openly talk about this - the existing open source model is being killed by LLMs, and there is no clear replacement.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#15

Post by woodruffw »

Today, it's easy to (publicly) evaluate the ability of LLMs to find bugs in open source codebases, because you don't need to ask permission. But this doesn't actually tell us the negative statement, which is that an LLM won't just as effectively find bugs in closed codebases, including through black-box testing, reverse engineering, etc.

If the null hypothesis is that LLMs are good at finding bugs, full stop, then it's unclear to me that going closed actually does much to stop your adversary (particularly as a service operator).

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#16

Post by discordianfish »

Peer_Rich wrote: post #5
doytch wrote: 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

Please, go ahead!

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#18

Post by wild_egg »

Peer_Rich wrote: post #5
doytch wrote: 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

It only takes 20 minutes and $200 to hack a closed source one too though. LLMs are ludicrously good at using reverse engineering tools and having source available to inspect just makes it slightly more convenient.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#20

Post by zb3 »

rvz wrote: post #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 w…

> especially for businesses with "open-core" products.

Then good, that overengineered, intentionally-crippled crap should go away.

Post reply on HN