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by fixermark 2631 days ago
From my point of view, if it's a choice between an ecosystem of tools that Google could kill at their whim and an ecosystem of tools floated and maintained by startup companies that could dry up and die at any time, it's a bit of an illusory choice.
1 comments
Kaiyou 2631 days ago
Go for open source tools then. If they are good enough for people to get use out of, they usually stay around. At least I can't think of an example where one disappeared for good.
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fixermark 2631 days ago
That's down an axis of "strictly worse than the alternatives." With an open-source ecosystem, I have to set it up and maintain it myself, when it breaks I have to service it by myself (often without a useful community to assist, because my problems are often unique to my special-snowflake configuration), and if I get attacked I'm 100% responsible for digging out of the assault with no recourse or assistance.

None of these are concerns with either Google's online offerings or the offerings of most startups.

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