[chipotle_coyote]

That "formula" really isn't particularly difficult to work around.

First off, if you're open sourcing your codebase because you're getting out of a particular market, you have to ask whether revealing techniques and strategies to competitors in that market is really an issue. After all, if those techniques and strategies had given you a competitive advantage, you probably wouldn't be having this discussion.

Second: If you really are concerned about that, just use the GPL.

[jessedhillon]

The assumption here being that the integration of the now disused product into the parent product (Mailbox into Dropbox) has no potential to reveal the internal workings of the parent product e.g. APIs or data structures. Or that those techniques would only be applicable to competitors in that market. Both are convenient for your argument, but there's no reason to think that they're correct. Moreover, there's no reason for a risk adverse company to accept those assumptions.

My point was to challenge open source cheerleaders to actually give a reason beyond their own gain for why a company should do this. Instead, we have blithe dismissals and narrowly constructed hypotheticals built on optimistic assumptions.

[jarek]

> My point was to challenge open source cheerleaders to actually give a reason beyond their own gain for why a company should do this. Instead, we have blithe dismissals and narrowly constructed hypotheticals built on optimistic assumptions.

I'm sorry, but what? Your whole initial argument is a narrow hypothetical "they will see our secrets" with no theory of what those secrets might actually be - what exactly do you expect in return? I gave you an answer based on your formula, and a follow-up comment afterward. Can you expand what about my answer was built on optimistic assumptions, in a way that your initial theory was not?

There are no private APIs nor secret data structures in software that you've distributed to users. It can all be decompiled and sniffed. "Oh but the competitors will see my code" is basically FUD. How many times has YC told us it's all about the execution, not the technology?

[jessedhillon]

Yeah, the difference is that the "narrow hypothetical" is a concern a real person at any company would have when tasked with deciding whether something should be open sourced. It's appropriately conservative.

You, however, are asking everyone to assume that it's totally safe to reveal any/all source code.

> There are no private APIs nor secret data structures in software that you've distributed to users.

That's fine. What about the code that lives on your servers and supports the client?