[plafl]

> This is why I'm convinced places that use proprietary tech are going to fail in the future since the natural forces of competition will cause the internal technology to stagnate.

I doubt proprietary tech is going to fade completely, but it's true that maybe there are forces that are pushing for big companies to make more and more projects open source. If you think about it it makes sense: the employees are happier because their work has more impact, they also benefit because they can showcase it in their CV. For the company they externalize testing, quality improves because employees are going to be more careful when their code is in the open and they are more motivated. It can also make hiring easier.

[cliff_badger]

I think you're incorrect, although I hope you're not.

This idea will never become a reality for the vast majority of companies, for the exact same reason that companies fear piracy. If I open source my product then anyone who uses that open source code is a lost sale. A lost sale means I make less money, less money means the board is mad, on and on and on...

The bottom line is money, and open sourcing their code means (to them) a loss in potential revenue.

[doctor_eval]

Well, that’s only true if you plan to sell the code. Much code exists not for its own sake, but to support the business. Maybe you need to build an in house inventory system for some kind of complex product you’re building. You were never gonna sell that software, but you still won’t open source it because that would help your competitors...

[ghaff]

Well, and if it's so tied into an in-house inventory system just tossing a bunch of code into a Github repo is about 99% useless. There is almost zero value to just tossing some open source code over the wall.

[freeone3000]

A counterpoint is that companies making money through sale of software code alone is the lowest ever. Google loses nothing from open source, as they sell nothing. The biggest companies have moved to SaaS stacks or enterprise sales models. We're seeing less value in the code itself, so the release of it is getting easier every day.

[yetanta]

Open source is going to be used to co-opt people into service contracts. For example one product I use right now. If you use it in a very particular way you do not have to pay much if at all to use it. But if you get out of that lane you need to goto the 'service contract' route. I am not talking 10 dollars a month either. I am talking 1-3k per machine. These things almost all want clusters. So usually at least 3. If you are using that level you probably will want at least 2 areas (dev, prod), more if you are doing it 'right'. So now your 'free' stuff just went sideways and now costs 200k+ just to get the software, per year. Oh but just use AWS/Azure/Google you say, add even more to that cost as they bury it in their usage fees. Then on top of that you need to develop your own programs.

I predict the open source bits will be bait. With many 90% solutions. The proprietary bits will be the ones you need to make it work like a real program. Oh there will still be soup to nuts full on free stacks. But I seeing more and more of this service fee way.

As for making hiring easier? Not so much. When you can get 100+ applicants for 1 position. The reality is at least 99 of those have to go away. One more filter does not do much other than let you round bin things faster say 'cant find anyone' then grab your favorite contracting firm and hire them anyway.

[mywittyname]

Elasticsearch was (is?) like that with AWS. The managed version lacked a lot of important enterprise features (LDAP integration) and was "optimized" to require several times as many machines for the same storage, since you had a ~1.5TB disk limit per node.

But I went from needing technical support from elastic 4-5 times a year, to zero and found work arounds for the other limitations, like cognito for authorization and storing less data in the cluster. The end result was a six-figure savings on licensing and less weekend work for me at the cost of a five-figure increase in AWS costs.

I'd say it was worth it.

[kamyarg]

This is a very interesting perspective, had not noticed this advantage for companies to have more open source projects.