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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

#91

Post by mkleczek »

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…

This is as long as you don't take _risk_ into account.

RedHat providing OSS licensed software is _less_ risk than RedHat providing proprietary closed source operating system.

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

#92

Post by jcgrillo »

Qwertious wrote: post #45
JimDabell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're a government you absolutely have the ability to compete with big tech, it's "just" a matter of political will. If you decide that it's important enough you can hire competitively from the same talent pool. Strategically it makes little sense to depend on another nation's companies to run your critical infrastructure. You have to own your dependencies.

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

#93

Post by Pooge »

BoredPositron wrote: post #66

The problem is that docker compose starts 20 containers and the fans go full bore just because you wanted to try a new wiki or notes app. The complexity of relatively simple software is getting insane.

I am one of the 10 users[1] in the world that uses Docker Swarm (container orchestrator like Kubernetes or Nomad), and I disagree with that statement. I have over 25 containers running (including Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Gitea, TeamSpeak, ...) and it barely uses 10GB of RAM (Jellyfin is eating up more than half of this).

Most of my Compose files contain 2 services (1 for app + 1 for database), but some contain 3 and some contain 1. It's incredibly easy to install new software and incredibly easy to shut it down temporarily if you don't need to use it all day.

I'd even argue that some companies would benefit more from using Swarm than Kubernetes. There is a lot of things to take into account when using Kubernetes (let alone setting it up for GitOps), but Docker Swarm can be managed by 1 person.

[1]: A joke, obviously, but it really isn't popular at all

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

#94

Post by vanviegen »

DandyDev wrote: post #84
surfingdino wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Let's say that is the reason, then that seems a very valid reason, right? Accountability is important, especially in large organizations. I guess what ticks me off a bit is the trope of dissing on management for saying 'no' but leaving out all the relevant context that might show management to be right. Don't get me wrong, I've seen my own fair share of bad management. But it's not so black and white when it comes to…

> Accountability is important, especially in large organizations.

Why? So we'll have someone to blame when things inevitably go wrong? In my experience, the people who like to say the buck stops with them are nowhere to be found when that happens.

I much prefer organizations focussed on actually getting things right, instead of worrying about who takes the blame.

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

#95

Post by danlitt »

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…

> From a business perspective the software though is a cheap part of the chain. And the least interesting part.

This is only because true most of the time businesses use a lot of publicly funded work without paying for it. If software development were entirely private, I'm sure businesses would find excuses that actually no it has to cost 100x what it would cost otherwise.

Everything you say about maintainability and stability is true. But writing software that can be operated as a service in the first place is substantially harder. It's just not as easy for a company to capture.

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

#96

Post by pasc1878 »

surfingdino wrote: post #81
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…

Linux took off when PCs were finally able to run operating systems with virtual memory. All of a sudden devs did not need to pay for licences for C/C++ compilers and other dev tools, but most importantly they no longer had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for Unix workstations or servers. It coincided with the commercialisation of the Internet (it started as a non-commercial project funded by DARPA).

Linux took off AFTER PCs were finally able to run operating systems with virtual memory.

I was using VM systems running on PCS from 1989 (OS/2) Linux only started in 1991 and did not take off for say 10 years, by then Windows NT existed.

So VM was necessary for Linux but was not the reason for it taking off.

In my experience Linux came in for servers replacing other Unix servers. Windows NT servers continued for some time.

As for desktop you still need Excel and to a lesser extent Word and these are still best on Windows.

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

#97

Post by tsimionescu »

chii wrote: post #39
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…

> They sell me by convincing me that everything just works, and when it doesn't they'll be there to fix it. and they'd tell you to pay up 10x, or lose this stability in the future; If it was an open source software, you will have the option to go to a competing vendor.

Is there a single example of multiple vendors selling support for the same open-source piece of software, where I can just hire a different vendor if I no longer like my current one, without changing anything major in my operations?

You could say that Canonical and IBM RedHat compete on offering Linux support, but the reality is that it's not that much harder to switch from RHEL to Ubuntu than switching to any other OS, so I don't think this counts.

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

#98

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

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.

It only doesn't matter if you don't care at all about software supply chain risks.

This is not a sane position in 2024 to hold.

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

#99

Post by hggigg »

They are missing something major here and getting bogged down in some technicalities. Open source has no alternative to big tech because big tech commoditised stuff that's useful whereas open source commoditised stuff that is interesting to the developers.

When I sit down at my mac, I have a working and very polished calendar, mail client, todo list, contacts, note taking app, music player, browser, photo editing and library management tools, video call and conferencing software etc. And all of it syncs with my phone and my tablet out of the box.

When I sit down at a Linux machine, I have a calendar that breaks every 5 minutes and I can't share anything with anyone without futzing with iCal feeds and hiring another provider, a mail client that is ugly as sin and doesn't integrate with the calendaring or contact management stuff at all, a job and a half to find a note taking app that actually works properly, a todo list app that syncs with nothing, a spreadsheet package that crashes whenever I try and print something and oh hell I give up by then. And the answer to this? Roll out nextcloud on a VPS. Kill me, with a spoon. This is not freedom, it's just slavery of another kind.

I just want to get shit done. Big tech covers that. Please take this as a recommendation to tidy up all this hell and just help people to get shit done and then it will be an alternative to big tech.

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

#100

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

sph wrote: post #80
DeathArrow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> they'd rather spend hours writing their own half-arsed solution than paying someone else $5/month

Paying someone else to solve your problems can also carry huge risks of all sorts. Sometimes investing 1000 dollars into a risk-free solution is better than 5 dollars a month with gigantic strings attached.

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