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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

#71

Post by auggierose »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #69
auggierose wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if Adobe open-sources all of their software tomorrow, that would not impact their business? > In truth the license doesn't matter. Come on. What matters is the way the business extracts value from you, and the license is part of that. Especially when the software you produce is so great that nobody needs to be called, because it just works.

I think the OP framing is about the enterprise / government framing, so Adobe maybe isn't the best example. Still, the licence doesn't matter - while probably being a bit of an overstatement - is somewhat true. If my enterprise relies on an Adobe service, it's primarily about my relationship with them, not the product license. ... But of course, product price and therefore revenue will decline if competitors can sell…

> If my enterprise relies on an Adobe service, it's primarily about my relationship with them, not the product license.

That is forgetting why your enterprise relies on an Adobe service. It is because nobody else has software that does their job as well as Adobe does.

This discussion is non-sensical to me. Of course the license matters.

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

#72

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by acka »

eru wrote: post #67
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…

> In truth the license doesn't matter. My accounting software might be open or closed. My supplier doesn't sell me based on the license. They sell me by convincing me that everything just works, and when it doesn't they'll be there to fix it. The license matters indirectly: if it's open source, you know that as a fall-back other suppliers might be able to step up and take over, if your original guys fail or get too i…

Moreover, if you have an issue with OSS software and have competent people in your own IT team, they could attempt to fix the problem and get results faster than going through the whole incident-report-blame-the-victim-finally-have-them-confirm-your-repro-wait-for-next-version-release-which-hopefully-includes-the-fix ordeal. Then if you contribute the fix back to the project, the community of users benefits as well, with possible free publicity for your organization to boot.

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

#74

Post by poincaredisk »

sph wrote: post #57
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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".

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

#75

Post by jcgrillo »

axegon_ wrote: post #36

As much as it pains me to say it, it's true. I use predominantly open source software on all my computers with some small exceptions. I used to rely on some cloud services because of the convenience and nothing else. But leaks started becoming way too common and what I can say about all places that I've worked at, data is handled really badly. If you pair that with some OSINT skills, you can learn pretty much anythin…

I think your experience is interesting, because it seems like approximately the same small fraction of individuals as companies commit to "vertically integrated software"--that is you own everything top to bottom. That is to say almost nobody does it. For an individual that's excusable, it's a mountain of expertise and effort, although I imagine it pays off rather well in skills learning. For a company, not so much. Companies (and governments) have the ability to acquire the expertise they need to vertically integrate. Some do so when they see value in it, but it's rare. Why do so few make the choice?

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

#76

Post by submeta »

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 Oracle licenses, not just for basic access but for additional features—like enabling data reading and analysis on the Oracle-embedded database in our main app. And, if we need to allocate more CPU cores on our VMs, we face yet another round of licensing fees.

Sometimes you don’t need much support. Yet pay tons of money.

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

#77

Post by DandyDev »

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…

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.

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

#78

Post by surfingdino »

DandyDev wrote: post #77
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…

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.

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

#79

Post by shnock »

DandyDev wrote: post #77
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…

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.

Same, but not necessarily due to nationality. It very much depends on the company culture and interpersonal relationship in question

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

#80

Post by sph »

DeathArrow wrote: post #65
sph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird question. There is no 100% effective software, there is no way to measure effectiveness (what sells in enterprise is marketing and a good sales team, not "effectiveness") and it all depends on the budget. If it fits your budget, and a commercial product has a good sales team (vs a cheaper opensource one with zero marketing), the commercial product is gonna get chosen even if it costs infinitely more. That's bas…

I haven't make any claim about 100% effective software. However, one software can be less effective than another. Saying that one is 90% as effective than the other is just to help visualise things. > what sells in enterprise is marketing and a good sales team, not "effectiveness" I work for a SaaS company. Our marketing and product teams work hard to convince potential customers that our software fulfills their need…

I run a SaaS company as well. We are outliers, especially if you are selling to other tech people, who are technically proficient and don't value their time very much—they'd rather spend hours writing their own half-arsed solution than paying someone else $5/month. I know how hard it is to sell to someone that believe your product is nothing more than "a shell script written over a weekend" (paraphrased comment from my Show HN)

Outside of tech, that's not how it works. They don't have in-house developers. They don't read HN. When they need a database, they ring up a large vendor and spend hundred of thousands a year for Oracle, when a PostgreSQL container would do just fine. They often don't even care they could pay zero, simply because PostgreSQL doesn't come with a phone number to call when the DB crashes.

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