A clear-eyed view of open software funding, impediments, and possibilities

Re:A clear-eyed view of open software funding, impediments, ... by streetcat1 on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:46AM (#20830532)

There is, the more money you make the better the product will be. Opensource goes AGAINST quality software:

1. Selling warranties - the better the product the less there is a need for a warranty.

2. Selling support - the better the product, the less there is a need for support.

3. Licensing exception - not sure what that is.

Again, open source today is :

1) Competitive strategy used by big companies against rival - for example kubernetes and its eco-system as a strategy of google against AWS.

2) Bait and switch - also known as open core. For example redis or hashicorp. I will open source a "community" edition to increase adaptation, but all the useful features are behind a wall. I think it was mongo CEO who actually stated that in an interview.

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Re:A clear-eyed view of open software funding, impediments, ... by z3ncyberpunk on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:39PM (#20835804)

Closed source is the quality issue. Competition is an artificial driver of innovation which actually just leads to fragmentation and lower quality across the board. The fact that higher pay leads to better quality is only a stipulation of our current societal culture and the problems inherent to it. As a global culture, our entire value system is broken from top to bottom in order to benefit a privileged few.

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Re:A clear-eyed view of open software funding, impediments, ... by cycloptic on Thursday August 29, 2019 @12:01PM (#20830678)

I don't believe in the mythical perfect software which has no bugs and which requires no warranty or support. You can't write complex pieces of software without requiring these things. By licensing exception I mean a dual-licensing sales scheme.

I agree "open source" is mostly a corporate bait-and-switch which is why I focus more on the "free as in free speech" aspect.

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Re:A clear-eyed view of open software funding, impediments, ... by streetcat1 on Thursday August 29, 2019 @12:19PM (#20830888)

Thanks. My point is that I want to create as high quality software as I can, and decrease support to zero. I want to get paid for doing tests. I want to add fault tolerant mechanism to mask failures,etc.

However, if my pay is based on support, I have an internal conflict.

There is something to be said about code review (which was the original Linus argument). However, I should not expect quality reviews from non paid developers.

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Re:A clear-eyed view of open software funding, impediments, ... by cycloptic on Thursday August 29, 2019 @12:39PM (#20831096)

Someone has to maintain those tests. Those qualify as "support". The idea behind code review isn't that amateur developers are going to do it, but that other companies can independently pay someone.

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