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Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

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Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#111

Post by twelvechairs »

submeta wrote: post #76

I work in the health sector at a company with nearly 1,000 employees. In our IT department, we rely on a wide range of proprietary software and spend substantial amounts on Oracle, MS SQL, and other licenses. I’ve been trying to convince management that PostgreSQL could be a solid alternative for many of our use cases, but it’s consistently dismissed as “not an option.” Meanwhile, we continue to pour money into Oracl…

It's a US approach not considered the same in Europe/internationally.

A good example is the GIS industry where ESRI (ArcGIS) dominates. In Europe the open source qGIS is generally an acceptable alternative despite less 'support'. In America its hard to find anyone using qGIS and ESRI is basically a monopoly.

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#112

Post by Cupprum »

poincaredisk wrote: post #74
sph wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet what "sells" about VSCode is the closed-source features, not the open source core. Everybody uses VScode today because of collaboration features and Copilot integration. VSCodium is very niche.

Citation needed? I use vscodium explicitly for its license, but my friends and coworkers who use vscode don't use collaboration features and copilot anyway and could use vscodium as well if they cared. What sells vscode is that it's a nice extensible cross platform IDE filling a niche between "just use vim" and "full blown jetbrains IDE for every language that you use".

Do you by any chance work with Python? If i recall correctly, the default Python library for VSCode doesnt work out of the box in VSCodium, as its pulled from MS servers, which VSCodium does not allow. I think you need to enable this connectivity on your own. So my understanding is that by “crippling” the maket, its more convenient for people to just use VSCode.

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#113

Post by pjmlp »

anthk wrote: post #101
pjmlp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would exist as I knew it until 2000's, and hence why I see a parallel where current non-copyleft adoption has taken us back to.

Even Microsoft used PDP10's back in the day.

And, since when was Xenix open source?

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#114

Post by nvk6 »

kmac_ wrote: post #38
bruce511 wrote: post #29

I think the key point is this; >> (By the way, all new software without accompanying support & guidance is doomed to fail. And if that software comes from a dominant player, you’ll just have to deal with that by the way.) There's a temptation to conflate the software license with the software business. This is natural, but places software as the primary value in the chain. From a business perspective the software tho…

That's the main point. No one buys software, they buy solutions. Accounting is a good example. I use a SaaS solution, but it doesn't matter because I could also take all my invoices to an accountant, and the effect would be the same. Also, mixing open licenses into business doesn't usually make sense. I also think that mass source scraping for ML/AI training will make businesses less likely to participate in open sou…

Large Corps arent exactly well known to handle the Explore part of the Explore-Exploit Tradeoff.

On the flip side lot of open source devs are going to get 100x more productive in the Exploit part than the avg coder monkey at large corp.

Nothing is obvious and predictable about where that story goes in an ever growing ever changing system.

Large corps will keep funding whoever gets the job done. While AI might replace lot of Large Corps activity which is basically on the Exploit side of the Tradeoff.

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#115

Post by pjmlp »

ekianjo wrote: post #63
pjmlp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would exist as I knew it until 2000's, and hence why I see a parallel where current non-copyleft adoption has taken us back to.

The whole internet is running mostly on OSS so not really

The Internet used plenty of closed source UNIX back then, and did just fine.

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#116

Post by pjmlp »

whoitwas wrote: post #61
pjmlp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would exist as I knew it until 2000's, and hence why I see a parallel where current non-copyleft adoption has taken us back to.

That's the point. It wouldn't exist. It's not possible without research and OSS. You can't write off the entire foundation of CS before a date. Well you can, but it's ignoring history.

There was plenty of research at my university without OSS.

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#117

Post by pjmlp »

ekianjo wrote: post #68
pjmlp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice explanation, except IBM has been one of the largest Linux contributors since forever, they saw it as a means to reduce Aix development costs. Linux only took off during the dotcom days as IBM, Oracle and Compaq started adopting it into commercial workloads, back in 2000. Visual Studio Code isn't in the same ballpark as Visual Studio. It was already an Azure project, as the Monaco editor, and it was a way to kill…

> ARM is only successful on mobile devices and Apple hardware. Your "only" is funny. That is by far the biggest computing market worldwide.

Until phones get to replace laptops and desktops, it doesn't matter much.

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#118

Post by eesmith »

kkfx wrote: post #37

Let's simplify: FLOSS domain is the internet domain, where anyone own a desktop, a homeserver, a company machine room etc. The big tech model is the old mainframe model, or the modern web where only few own anything. Try to mimicking them is a waste of time and can't work, pushing the society toward ownership and freedom might work, because in a way or another we will end up there being technically the sole solution.

FLOSS is the personal computer model, where you own the computer and have final say on what data is processed on your machine. If you can't try to make your software or computer lie in on your behalf, it is not FOSS.

The big tech model where trust is in the company, not the person. Business love the big tech model because it's easier to let a few credit card companies deal with the trust issue than establish a trust relationship with everyone directly (or deal with cash), because surveillance capitalism is more profitable, and because it's more profitable to rent than to sell.

The big tech model can profit first on that cost difference, and later on switching costs which would otherwise inhibit abuse.

It has essentially nothing to do with the internet, as mainframes were networked long before personal computers. Even back in the 1980s, POS terminals used dial-up to verify credit card transactions.

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#119

Post by throwaway19972 »

This is excellent. It's also worth noting we don't need to fund services via supporting private enterprise, either—many services should arguably be operated by zero-profit entities. For the most part, after paying infrastructure bills and salaries, the profit motive is contrary to providing quality service over time (see: enshittification)

Re: Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech

#120

Post by mjw1007 »

surfingdino wrote: post #78
DandyDev wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I hear a story like this - "management says 'no'" - I wonder if anyone cared/dared to ask follow up questions. Why was PostgreSQL not an option according to management? I would not take their dismissal at face value. I'd want to know why not. But that might be Dutch culture.

Insurance. The piece of paper that states who the buck stops with when there's a claim or lawsuit.

I disbelieve that starting a lawsuit against Oracle because their software didn't work as it was supposed to would ever end well.

Do you know of any examples of that happening?

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