[davidjgraph]

I'm not quite sure why everyone feels OS means you'll have the app forever. This isn't true in my experience.

Adobe can buy the company that is supplying the devs for penpot the same way it bought Figma.

Sure the source can be reused, but you think another collection of individuals will come along and host the project in the same way?

You think the codebase would be developed/maintained at all if all the original devs left? History says otherwise, from the examples I've seen.

[fny]

I've said this before elsewhere and was downvoted to hell. We're about to enter the golden age of bitrot. Software, due to its immense chain of dependencies, requires constant maintenance. There is no guarantee *any software* --proprietary or FOSS--will survive unless some human gives a shit.

So penpot is a great alternative to Figma for as long as you're damn sure someone will be willing to keep it alive.

Everyone has become so used to pulling or downloading whatever random software and have it work and creating forks like wildfire (just look at how many ubuntu flavors there are) without considering what will happen if the devs just don't have the time anymore or don't care. And if something massive upstream changes like CPU architecture (hello M1) or some browser change or some migration to Oauth5, everything gets borked in one shot.

Also, what's going to happen when a package creator dies? The first generation of FOSS devs are still alive and well. Will the second generation decide to maintain their work or is it easier to rewrite things?

Personally this is why I started only pushing packages that have extremely small surface areas (a single function call) that I know I'm willing to maintain indefinitely.

This is also why I became so married to plain text.

[alexvoda]

The difference is that for FLOSS it is sufficient for anyone to care enough (time and money) but for proprietary software it is NECESSARY for the copyright holder to care and to be alligned or at least not in direct conflict with the users.

[zegl]

Oh, tell me about it! I’ve spent this week trying to reproduce the results of a paper from 2019.

Out of the box, the referenced sources doesn’t even compile or run. I’ve been fighting random Python/Java/Scala dependencies, using whatever version was the “latest” at time of publishing usually works, unless of course, it doesn’t support M1…

[tlavoie]

I'm curious how things like Nix will help with this in the future, especially as the platform matures.

I took a bit of time a little while back to convert a wee app of mine to using Nix flakes to build, specifically because I was getting bitten by API changes in a key dependency. Once I nailed down the configuration to include the version(s) that worked with my original code... it worked. Took a while that first time, but got it done, and now it should be defined in a way that stays robust.

[mrits]

Having a bunch of small packages instead of a few larger ones would be considered increasing surface area in most security software. You could do it safely but I wouldn't be evangelizing this as a sound idea.

[happimess]

I think the difference is that if Figma's website goes offline, you lose all of your figma stuff. If penpot gets acqui-killed, then you can just clone a version that you were comfortable with and keep going.

[davidjgraph]

Yes, just like you can clone draw.io and run that forever. Except, until you can't.

Like last week when Safari 16 broke any use of the command key on Macs and we received 5+ reports per hour until it was fixed.

[Lariscus]

I don't think that is a good example, nothing is stopping you from using a different browser or operating system to keep using your preferred application after development is shutdown. If you are self-hosting these avenues are still open to you; a discontinued online service is just gone.

[KMnO4]

The way that I like to view it is this: if I put my laptop in a vault for 15 years and then open it back up, can I use the software?

Of course, I’ll be on a 15 year old OS but the answer appears to be “yes”.

Not the case with Figma or other hosted tools. Not even the case with Photoshop or tools that require license checks / internet connectivity.

[throw10920]

If you use something like Nix or Guix, then you might be able to continue to install and run that very old software, even decades into the future, until the old repos vanish and the hardware becomes physically incompatible - at which point, if it's important enough to you, you may have put in the work to port the software forward to new (web) API revisions and browser behaviors.

[brainbag]

What happened to draw.io? I use it regularly and wonder now if I need to find something new.

[mekoka]

> why everyone feels OS means you'll have the app forever.

Your hyperboles aside, I don't think there's much to prove. Maintained and long lasting forks abound. Enough to instill confidence in the principle.

If Figma was open source, there would be a fork right now and a team of contributors forming around it as we speak. That and a migration of a substantial part of its community.

> This isn't true in my experience.

Could you share, so that the naive optimist could at least have some context?

[worble]

>I'm not quite sure why everyone feels OS means you'll have the app forever. This isn't true in my experience.

It at least gives it a chance, unlike closed source where once it dies it most definitely is gone forever (barring some very dedicated and helpful people reverse engineering the code, this seems to largely happen with video games).

Meanwhile I'm running Strawberry, a fork of Clementime, which is a fork of Amarok, which probably has code from other projects older than me in it.

Will FOSS software always live on after the original maintainers move on? Of course not, but not only does it stand a much better chance, you'll still always have the source available to compile it yourself on newer systems, given the will.

[that_guy_iain]

It just feels like one of those things people want to believe no matter if it's true or not. For example, when New York shutdown a recycling plant because it was worse for the environment than not recycling and everyone protested to have it reopened because no matter what anyone told them they believed that recycling is good therefore, the recycling plant was good for the environment.

Most people here need open source tools to do their job in one way or another. They love the fact they don't need to pay for it and they can just use it. They've been sold on the free software ideogly that it's possible to fork means that someone will or they even they will do it. No matter how much their employers refuse to open source their code, refuse to pay for open source contributors they fully believe that using an open source library or tool means there is less risk for their company because they can make the changes themselves. However, the risk is often greater. Almost certainly their employer won't pay for it and they will have to look for a replacement. They won't have any support contracts that can enforce how much notice they get given to find a replacement. The open source tool will most often just be abandoned.

[btown]

Bryan Cantrill's LISA11 talk on this history of OpenSolaris provides a great anecdote for this, and it largely tracks your fears here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1680s

It also, a couple minutes later, devolves into a hilariously entertaining rant about Oracle and Larry Ellison and the perils of anthropomorphizing lawnmowers, and it's one of my favorite things ever.

[jsrcout]

That was wondrously great.

[afavour]

> Sure the source can be reused, but you think another collection of individuals will come along and host the project in the same way?

Look at OpenOffice vs LibreOffice. MySQL vs MariaDB. It can happen. At the very least it's more likely than if you're using commercial software.

[davidjgraph]

As I recall the majority of the OpenOffice team went to Libre, that isn't the point I'm making here.

[mixmastamyk]

The team can take their buy out, work for ~two years then quit. And be more likely to work on the still floss version after that.

VMs are a thing as well. These are not insurmountable issues.

[jchw]

Honestly, I don't think this is fair. If software is useful enough, there are people and other companies that are often willing to put in money and resources. For a pure community example, consider the story of Jellyfin, a fork of Emby.

Open source is not a panacea. But just because keeping the door open doesn't guarantee anyone will bother to use it doesn't mean having the door open is not ridiculously useful.

I think there Is a way to tell if an open source project is robust against shenanigans:

- The more stakeholders investing, the better.

- Projects with governance and copyright not assigned to a single company have a lot less chance of needing a fork to begin with.

[firen777]

I am not alive long enough to know many examples of open source dying after takeover. The most vivid counter example I can remember is Audacity fork Tenacity. Thanks to how hated muse group is, it generated quite a bit of momentum in the beginning (seems to die down a bit now, but I wouldn't call it dead)

What you say might be true, but at least open source give us second chance, no matter how miniscule (which I'd argue is not miniscule at all). If it's closed source it's pretty much game over.

[whywhywhywhy]

Only solution is a spite company.

[orbital-decay]

With a non-gatekept solution you have two options typically unavailable for proprietary software:

- freeze the versions, keeping using it until you find a better one. Practice shows it can be done for quite a while in many cases (years if needed)

- migrate to the different similar software, or hire an expert to do it for you

There were too many cases of wonderful proprietary products suddenly becoming ransomware overnight, holding your data hostage.

[specialist]

Would you prefer FOSS or commercial abandonware?