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by fluoridation 2 days ago
It's not that difficult. You invest effort into research in the hope it'll give you a competitive edge. If someone else can come along and reproduce your results practically at a much lesser cost, then you lose that competitive edge. You're back at square one, except you've lost the cost of the research.
1 comments
olalonde 2 days ago
Hence why most companies don't publish research and most software is proprietary. Publishing and open source only make sense in certain situations.
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1718627440 2 days ago
Open source doesn't mean, it's available to the general public.
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fluoridation 2 days ago
What's your point?
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1718627440 2 days ago
That the point he is making does not apply to open source, but rather to freeware (which is open source too). Open source can be completely B2B, without releasing it to third parties. Also open source is not free software, so you can also forbid your costumers from sharing the source further.

EDIT: That's crap. I only thought about the aspect of continuing sharing, but if you also don't want your direct customers to know, then of course open source is very much relevant.

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fluoridation 2 days ago
The point is "most companies don't publish research and most software is proprietary [because that entails giving up the competitive edge]". I don't see anything in there about price. Also, I think most people would say that if you have to pay an exorbitant license fee to see the source code then the software is still proprietary. I don't see how it's not true that most companies keep their software proprietary to retain a competitive advantage.
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olalonde 2 days ago
It seems you are confusing source-available and open source. One of the criteria of open source is free redistribution. If your license forbids sharing the source then it's not open source.

In practice, if you use an actual open source license in a B2B setting, it's best to assume that your software will become available to the general public (e.g. it just takes one person to publish it on GitHub).

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1718627440 2 days ago
> It seems you are confusing source-available and open source.

Yes, you are right.

> In practice, if you use an actual open source license in a B2B setting, it's best to assume that your software will become available to the general public

If that is your trust level in your customer, you also need to assume, that they would also give away the binary. I don't think you generally need that level of distrust in a customer.

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alt227 2 days ago
Is this not why copyright exists?
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