| These are the same tired arguments being made for almost 3 decades now. Sure, go ahead and do your own thing. Just don't expect FOSS users to sympathize with your point of view. To wit tho', I'll try and explain why (I'm sure ineffectively, but if you were really interested, you'd have already made the effort to understand). A lot of people often confuse FOSS users and users of proprietary software. The difference is that FOSS users (for example users who do install linux, even on a Mac) typically feel more comfortable with the 'idea' that they or anyone else can look under the hook and tinker, if it comes to it and bothers them sufficiently. This is the primary reason why proprietary software is unappealing to them. Users of proprietary software don't value the freedom to look under the hood and tinker as much. Personally speaking, I won't judge people choosing one or the other. However, arguments such as OSS makes "life a lot easier for a bad actor to pick it apart." or "..if you only have a handful of contributors, mistakes may not be caught." or "there is nothing to stop someone from forking it and selling it for less /offering it for free." is just disingenuous. > bad actor Unless your software is crazy popular and there is cred to be earned in the black hat community, people who go around looking for exploits in OSS typically would not be bad actors. In fact, a proprietary tool that run /on top of/ an OSS platform would be a much more appealing target for bad actors than an open source one -- because hey, finding a way to use 'paid-for' software for free is far more appealing than finding a way to reverse engineer some random binary custom format used to store addressbooks. > mistakes may not be caught ... total(mistakes caught by in house team) <= total(mistakes caught by in house team + 1 contributor)
why is this hard to understand ? > nothing to stop someone from forking it ...for free Firstly - Licensing. Learn about it. Secondly, search for forks that are more popular than the upstream. I'm sure you might find a few (although I am also sure you won't find many). Understand why they are more popular (hint: will have nothing to do with code). And finally, (most importantly) if you still feel that access to code is the only thing that will stop competitors from copying you and then beating you on price -- well, think hard about your future business strategy. |
Very few manage to do a living from FOSS unless being hired by some big corp.