HACKER Q&A
📣 aambertin

Is closed-source software inherently evil?


So, I have been around for a while, and seen most of the OSS revolution from the moment that the ASF was born. I have seen things take-off from Hibernate “being adopted” by JPA, and .Net generics being brought into Java… and then bought by Oracle, and Oracle suing a bunch of companies… Let alone all the mess with AWS vs Elastic vs MongoDB and so on and so forth.

So without giving me a lecture on the history of OSS and how it helped move the industry forward (which I know it did!)... the flat, straight-on questions are (and let’s let alone pricing, assume its “free” comparatively to the business you are applying it to):

Are closed-source solutions inherently evil and risk-carrying? Why is that? Why would you NOT choose a 10x solution for your use case only because it’s not open-source?

I’m very interested in your personal experience and from which angle did you look at it in such a situation (for example: developers unable to run things locally in a light-weight manner -vs- enterprise architects struggling with lock-in concerns).

Your opinion is very important, but real-life examples would mean a world for me to better understand it :)


  👤 JohnFen Accepted Answer ✓
> Are closed-source solutions inherently evil and risk-carrying?

Absolutely not.

> Why would you NOT choose a 10x solution for your use case only because it’s not open-source?

Because software being open source (in the general sense) gives that software an enormous advantage all by itself. Even if proprietary software is "10x", it's still burdened with the rather large disadvantages of being proprietary.

I buy and use proprietary software, but only when it enables me to accomplish something I can't accomplish with open source software. And even then, I'm keeping an eye out to be able to ditch the proprietary solution as quickly as possible.


👤 Eridrus
No, lol.

The people who think closed source software is evil are an incrementally small minority of the population who just happen to be very loud about it.

Developers are broadly on the other hand, super cheap, and generally unwilling to pay for software, believing they could write everything themselves and thinking that is always a good use of their time for the business.


👤 aambertin
Your opinion is very important, but real-life examples would mean a world for me to better understand :)

👤 calobher
No, according to my understanding of what you wrote; however, can you give examples?

👤 jarule
No, intellectual property is as evil as nuclear codes, Coke, or Disney. The free software zealots started out as normal guys looking to save a buck and only later came to justify their cheapness with some insane moral legerdemain.

👤 PeterZaitsev
No. Not at all. I think there are two main points 1) "Everything being equal" Open Source Software provides more value than proprietary. 2) Most of blowback you see is not about proprietary software but behavior of abuse or "bait and switch", which proprietary companies can practice because they have leverage