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> The interesting discussion is in whether commercial software should be closed source or source available with restrictions. Thank you! The author carefully uses the term "proprietary software", drawing no distinction between whether it is closed source or source available, as if that distinction is totally beside the point. But for me, as someone who makes software, there is a huge distinction between those two things! I really hate using tools that I can't read the source of. Just recently I traced some documentation on how python garbage collection works into the implementation for that particular thing in the particular version of the language that I'm using. If python were a single-vendor source-available tool, that would be a bummer and I'd be less likely to use it, but it wouldn't actually affect my work much. But if it were closed source, that would absolutely be a deal breaker for me. I need to be able to go look and see how my tools work, otherwise I'm blind. I do agree with the author that community-driven open source is better, and I consider projects like the Linux Foundation, BSD, GNU, Apache, CNCF, etc. to be wonderful miraculous gifts. But I also worry that a distressing proportion of the most important software I use has been built on the backs of a series of absurdly under-compensated and eventually burnt-out passionate nerds, and I can't stand that. So I'm sympathetic to a model that has a more obvious (to me) path to creating software tooling that I can use without flying blind, while compensating people adequately for their work. |