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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

#41

Post by eesmith »

keelhaule wrote: post #19

I think the author is not learned in the technology economics. IBM to save it's business had to merge with Red hat almost 50% 50% in 2018. Microsoft it's security and cloud offering had to, open source it's .net framework, aquire GitHub, ditch Visual Studio fot Visual Studio Code, ARM is eating the world, it over hauled the x86_x64 architecture, and became the Defacto architecture. We can go on and on and on and on,t…

Visual Studio Code is not open source.

GitHub is not open source.

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

#44

Post by NitpickLawyer »

eesmith wrote: post #41
keelhaule wrote: post #19

I think the author is not learned in the technology economics. IBM to save it's business had to merge with Red hat almost 50% 50% in 2018. Microsoft it's security and cloud offering had to, open source it's .net framework, aquire GitHub, ditch Visual Studio fot Visual Studio Code, ARM is eating the world, it over hauled the x86_x64 architecture, and became the Defacto architecture. We can go on and on and on and on,t…

Visual Studio Code is not open source. GitHub is not open source.

I mean, technically true, but from context we can infer they were referring to vscode, which is open source. Visual Studio Code is vscode + ms stuff, but at it's core the project is MIT, and has been recently forked by a lot of teams (cursor, void, that fruit scandal, etc).

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

#45

Post by Qwertious »

JimDabell wrote: post #16
Guthur wrote: post #3

Countries have run nationalise infrastructure before, and successfully. The problem is if they did not view it as nationalised infrastructure and instead viewed it as some sort of mana that would fall from open source heaven. Open source software is the building blocks used by large rent (service fee) seeking corporations. They will extract large profits from any of these contracts and that is a demonstrable fact, th…

The point of going to big businesses for software services and support is that most customers don’t have needs that are large enough to justify the full-time staff needed for top-notch support. So companies that provide services amortise this over many customers and can employ n dozen full-time staff for a particular subsystem when the average customer might only need them a few times a year. So the tradeoff makes se…

Theoretically the advantage of outsourcing to a business instead of running it inhouse is that you can put it out to tender, picking the most competent of the entire industry, whereas your inhouse team is what it is.

In practice, Microsoft isn't going anywhere. You're just paying for an external inhouse.

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

#46

Post by whoitwas »

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…

License does matter. Without OSS, computing as we know it doesn't exist. A better analogy would be if roads and utility cables were built as open source, everyone used them for free, then they were acquired by giant companies who charge for their use.

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

#48

Post by DeathArrow »

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…

>I don't pick say accounting software based on price. Or access to the source code. I base it on effectiveness.

So you would pick a software costing 1 million over a software that is 90% as effective but costs 1 thousand?

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

#49

Post by porcoda »

keelhaule wrote: post #19

I think the author is not learned in the technology economics. IBM to save it's business had to merge with Red hat almost 50% 50% in 2018. Microsoft it's security and cloud offering had to, open source it's .net framework, aquire GitHub, ditch Visual Studio fot Visual Studio Code, ARM is eating the world, it over hauled the x86_x64 architecture, and became the Defacto architecture. We can go on and on and on and on,t…

Don't confuse "giving software away for free because people have been conditioned to expect software that costs nothing" with "open source". And I have no idea why ARM is on that list: sure, they broke the Intel monoculture, but they certainly aren't free or open in any sense of the word.

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

#50

Post by DeathArrow »

whoitwas wrote: post #46
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…

License does matter. Without OSS, computing as we know it doesn't exist. A better analogy would be if roads and utility cables were built as open source, everyone used them for free, then they were acquired by giant companies who charge for their use.

How is software an utility?
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