[kite_and_code]

bamboolib co-founder here:

It's correct that bamboolib is (still) closed-source (which might be subject to change but I don't make promises).

It's also correct that customers can extend the bamboolib UI in various ways via plugins that they can author themselves. That empowers them to build bamboolib into the kind of tool that they want.

Also, all the code is always exported and thus, there is at least no "code lockin".

Regarding being "at their mercy", I can say that there are many customers who are happy by the service that we provide.

[NoImmatureAdHom]

I'm sure you have good intentions, but the fact of the matter is the company may be acquired or the people replaced, and those intentions might change.

IMHO investing in a closed-source product like bamboolib as a tool for an important business function is very risky. Imagine you're a small company, and you start using bamboolib for some part of your data analysis pipeline. Bamboolib gets acquired (you have exited kite_and_code, congratulations), and the now very large company that controls it decides to stop supporting some feature critical to what you're doing, make an addition that messes everything up, go full-on SaaS somehow, or just shut the product down. What now? You've been growing, so you've got a small team of junior non-experts who were getting the hang of it...switching will be painful (or you could lock yourself in that walled garden and pay the SaaS price...).

[kite_and_code]

Fair points.

I guess in this specific case at hand, companies can switch between bamboolib, mito, dtale and it is less likely that all of them will become unavailable at the same time. The switch is also not so hard because there are no underlying proprietary file formats involved (except for bamboolib plugins) because the generated code is pandas, plotly, etc.

Similarly as described below/above: counter-intuitively, the availability of open-source LibreCalc makes it easier and safer to adopt closed-source Excel.

[nojito]

Excel is closed source and it powers the world.

[wanderingmind]

If MS shuts down, there are better FOSS tools that can process excel files (Librecalc), or in general the entire office ecosystem. Can't say the same for small startups.

[kurupt213]

This is a flawed way of looking at things.