I’m surprised it didn’t mention vendor lock-in, which is definitely a selling point for open source.
Open Source does not win by being cheaper
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Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#22The problem with this business model is it creates a tension between the OSS version and the paid versions - you want the OSS version to be good, but not such a good solution that nobody feels the need to pay for your SaaS/consulting/etc. That tension seems to inevitably lead to obvious features missing or functionality/knowledge that's needed to operate at any scale coistered away as closed source so the sponsoring…
What’s the pattern you’re referring to? I’m curious how these infra projects keep AWS/GCP from killing them
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#23The author calls out they are specifically talking about open source solutions that compete with paid offerings. IMO, the jury is very much still out on whether open source "wins" in this regard. In the past decade we've seen a huge rise of open source products, and in the last 5 years or so we've seen many of them move away from that. MongoDB, the Hashicorp stack, Elastic, Red Hat, MinIO, the list goes on. There are…
The Caddy project is fighting to show it can work. We are having moderate success.
I just gave a talk about this a couple weeks ago at an internal company event and will be doing so again at GoWest in a few weeks. The premise is that open source licenses are what they are: they grant freedom, but not other things that companies would pay money for. Proprietary licenses do offer what companies need, but at the cost of freedom.
I believe there is a third model that works in the middle without compromising freedom or reliability. By staying open source and filling the gap of what companies need through sponsorships, I think this may work for some.
I'm currently redesigning the Caddy website to emphasize this and hope it will work!
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#24I think the key point which is missed here is - Open Source gives you the choice.
It does not necesarry mean cheaper (in a moment) but it means if you're not happy with vendor pricing, quality or there are other factors in play, you have alternatives.
With proprietary technology choosing technology means marrying vendor for life
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#25"Open Source" doesn't win, period, because it doesn't compete with anything. Open Source is not a business model or a product. It's an engineering widget. You can use it to build a product, or you can use it to make a jig to shore up an uneven table leg. Nobody cares about the license or whether they can read your code. They care if you build a product that solves their problem.
You know why companies use Open Source, for the most part? It's free. Not because it's better than the non-Open Source alternative, because very often, it is not. And not because they can read the source code, because companies need a working product much more than they need the ability to write their own patch for a bug. And not because of some feel-good notion of sharing with a community. It's just cheap and plentiful. Which is great, for the consumer. But it's not easy to build a company on a free product.
For the most part, Open Source products win by either being A) cheaper, B) Freemium, C) "Source-Available", D) being the incumbent, or E) a better product.
Sometimes "a better product" really does win out, if a product is able to provide features competitors don't. But incumbents have had the time and resources to establish lots of features, a solid track record, and lots of support and integrations, so not going with the incumbent tends to be a bad idea. People prefer Source-Available when it's completely free, and Freemium if it's not completely free. All things being equal, cheaper wins.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck trying to get any actual liability out of them... Like, go try to make Oracle write you a contract where their base going down compensates your lost profits. You just won't get it, unless you throw some hideous amount of money their way (and they will just pay insurance company and pocket the rest).
It's not about compensation, it's about finger-pointing. "WE didn't bill your card 40 times draining your bank account -- STRIPE did! Go sue them, not us!"
You are still getting sued.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
What liability are you referring to?
Component breaks due to bug, deployment misconfiguration, scaling failure, etc., and your company loses $1M during the outage. If it's a vendor with an SLA, you can (sometimes) get them to cover the $1M. If it's in-house, you're eating it. It's often cheaper to build/run stuff yourself (unless it's so commodified that you're benefiting from amortization across the vendor's many clients), but then you have to be self-…
I don't think liability payments are that common. As someone who helps in analyzing software purchase decisions, it's certainly not something I hear people bring as a major factor.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#28> For some, this might be a tough pill to swallow. But a for-profit business exists for profit.
No, a business usually exists to provide some useful good or service to its customers. FedEx delivers packages. Apple makes phones and computers. Etc.
> Definitionally and practically. Profit is what allows the company to hire employees, grow, and sustain itself—it is quite literally what funds ongoing development
That's gross profit. Regular (net) profit takes operating expenses (including R&D) and other business expenses (interest payments, etc.) into account.
It is certainly possible for non-profit businesses - as well as public benefit corporations - to fund R&D.
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#29[deleted]
Re: Open Source does not win by being cheaper
#30The author calls out they are specifically talking about open source solutions that compete with paid offerings. IMO, the jury is very much still out on whether open source "wins" in this regard. In the past decade we've seen a huge rise of open source products, and in the last 5 years or so we've seen many of them move away from that. MongoDB, the Hashicorp stack, Elastic, Red Hat, MinIO, the list goes on. There are…
The Caddy project is fighting to show it can work. We are having moderate success. I just gave a talk about this a couple weeks ago at an internal company event and will be doing so again at GoWest in a few weeks. The premise is that open source licenses are what they are: they grant freedom, but not other things that companies would pay money for. Proprietary licenses do offer what companies need, but at the cost of…
I love Caddy and have shilled to everyone I know, so thanks for your great work. I'm keen to hear more about your model, because I think the influx of companies abandoning their open source roots has shown the problems with the current approach. I am rooting for you folks!