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Cal.com is going closed source

cal.com

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Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#161

Post by r2vcap »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #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…

As LLMs improve and adoption grows, maintaining a FOSS project is becoming more complex and more expensive in terms of time and manpower. That part is easy to understand.

It is also become a trend that LLM-assisted users are generating more low-quality issues, dubious security reports, and noisy PRs, to the point where keeping the whole stack open source no longer feels worth it. Even if the real reason is monetization rather than security, I can still understand the decision.

I suspect we will see more of this from commercial products built around a FOSS core. The other failure mode is that maintainers stop treating security disclosures as something special and just handle them like ordinary bugs, as with libxml2. In that sense, Chromium moving toward a Rust-based XML library is also an interesting development.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#162

Post by raybb »

ryanleesipes wrote: post #143

Head of Thunderbird project here. Our scheduling tool, Thunderbird Appointment, will always be open source. Repo here: https:// github.com/thunderbird/appointment Come talk to us and build with us. We'll help you replace Cal.com

You should add some screenshots to the readme or somewhere before a sign in screen.

Sounds like a great tool though. How much is the hosted version?

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#163

Post by femto »

Will it make any difference to security? LLMs are excellent pattern matchers. The source is a sequence of tokens, the binary is a sequence of tokens. Whats the difference to an LLM?

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#164

Post by teleforce »

bit1993 wrote: post #101
DrammBA wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling the real reason is them trying to avoid someone using AI to copyright-wash their product, they're just using security as the excuse.

Called this 9 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44559840 "AI slop is rapidly destroying the WWW, most of the content is becoming more and more low-quality and difficult to tell if its true or hallucinated. Pre-AI web content is now more like the golden-standard in terms of correctness, browsing the Internet Archive is much better. This will only cause content to go behind pay-walls, allot of open-source…

Typical FUD.

Replace AI with "open source and Linux", and "open source" with "Windows" in the statements. That's what Microsoft's PR team would have said about open source and Linux about 20 years back in the 2000s.

After the unsuccessful FUD era, now Microsoft is running away with Linux by running its Windows alongside via WSL to combat MacOS Unix-like popularity, and due to Linux and open source dominance in the cloud OS demographic.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#165

Post by a-fadil »

Open source means living under constant scrutiny. AI just made that scrutiny cheaper and faster. I feel this every day maintaining an open source project. The temptation to close the source is real but let’s not forget that open source is what raised the bar for software quality in the first place.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#166

Post by dnnddidiej »

a-fadil wrote: post #165

Open source means living under constant scrutiny. AI just made that scrutiny cheaper and faster. I feel this every day maintaining an open source project. The temptation to close the source is real but let’s not forget that open source is what raised the bar for software quality in the first place.

Not really. Open source just means distributing the source. Either via CD or some internet based protocol.

Maybe you are referring to the whole Github thing.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#168

Post by mynameisvlad »

dnnddidiej wrote: post #166
a-fadil wrote: post #165

Open source means living under constant scrutiny. AI just made that scrutiny cheaper and faster. I feel this every day maintaining an open source project. The temptation to close the source is real but let’s not forget that open source is what raised the bar for software quality in the first place.

Not really. Open source just means distributing the source. Either via CD or some internet based protocol. Maybe you are referring to the whole Github thing.

I mean, by definition, open source means that the source code is available and therefore _open_ to scrutiny. Regardless of how it is distributed.

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#169

Post by indianmouse »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #96
DrammBA wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling the real reason is them trying to avoid someone using AI to copyright-wash their product, they're just using security as the excuse.

An app like Cal.com can be vibe coded in a few evenings with a Chrome MCP server pointed to their website to figure out all the nooks and crannys. The moat of Cal.com is not the code, it's the users who don't want to migrate. The real answer is they are likely having a hard time converting people to paid plans

May be trying creating one and see how much effort and time is required to clone such a functionality to a proper working state! Something for personal use can be created in about 5-10 days, but even then the skill that is required and the amount of tokens to burn, hosting and security etc, will easily kill. This is exactly the thought process of many, but it will surely kill many opensource contributors. I've stopped committing anything to any open source repos as a personal choice. I do not want to train a LLM which will eventually create more slop and headaches since for me, time is the only important factor which holds the maximum value! Nothing else!

Re: Cal.com is going closed source

#170

Post by genxy »

vlapec wrote: post #52
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #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…

LLMs really are stunningly good at finding vulnerabilities in code, which is why, with closed-source code, you can and probably will use them to make your code as secure as possible. But you won't keep the doors open for others to use them against it. So it is, unfortunately, understandable in a way...

You don't need the source, the LLM has the source, it is called the binary.
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