4 ms·

> You also can’t go by whether or not it’s open source, because open source apps get abandoned. But if it's open source, you can (FSVO "can", depending on your

> You also can’t go by whether or not it’s open source, because open source apps get abandoned. But if it's open source, you can (FSVO "can", depending on your skillset) fix critical problems yourself. Let's say I get Mailborg for $10 and move my mail over to it. Mailborg gets acquired. Dropborg eventually closes Mailborg. Next month, Apple releases OS X 10.12 and something breaks. I'm SOL. Or I get open-source Thunderborg. Borgzilla stops development of Thunderborg. Next month, Apple releases OS X 10.12, and something breaks. No matter. I'm still not SOL. Either I have a chance of fixing it, or more likely, someone smarter than me will find a fix and post it, maybe even with a new binary. I'm no Stallmanite, but this is the whole origin myth of free software, for goodness' sake.

dublinben 11y ago
More practically, you can pay someone to fix those problems for you. This someone doesn't need to be related to the original authors in any way, and you can even put out a competitive bid open to the whole world.
kelnos 11y ago
Chances are still pretty low, however. I used to be a long-time open source maintainer, and I definitely found (based on my own experience, and the experience of others trying to get started on projects I've worked on) that the barrier to entry to almost any non-trivial code base is fairly high. And debugging is usually more difficult than adding a new feature. Open source communities also don't "just happen". It's pretty rare for someone to throw some code in a GitHub responsibility, wander off, and later find that it's suddenly become actively (or even passively) maintained. Unless it's an app that's mission-critical to my life and there aren't any alternatives (even if they're not as good), I can't see myself digging in to fix bugs. And even then, it still feels like a hard sell. I also feel like most apps that people might love enough to even consider diving into also have server components. If the company running the service shuts down, that's another barrier to setting up your own (assuming the backend pieces were even open sourced too!). Sure, it happens, but those tend to be very very exceptional cases.
- juliendorra 11y ago
  One of those great exception is Erherpad. The open source base helped launch a community then a full rewrite. Hopefully the hackpad fork will now be merged or at least some features will be back ported.
s73v3r 11y ago
It really depends on how big the community is. HackPad was open sourced; it hasn't been touched in months.

dublinben 11y ago

More practically, you can pay someone to fix those problems for you. This someone doesn't need to be related to the original authors in any way, and you can even put out a competitive bid open to the whole world.

kelnos 11y ago

Chances are still pretty low, however. I used to be a long-time open source maintainer, and I definitely found (based on my own experience, and the experience of others trying to get started on projects I've worked on) that the barrier to entry to almost any non-trivial code base is fairly high. And debugging is usually more difficult than adding a new feature. Open source communities also don't "just happen". It's pretty rare for someone to throw some code in a GitHub responsibility, wander off, and later find that it's suddenly become actively (or even passively) maintained. Unless it's an app that's mission-critical to my life and there aren't any alternatives (even if they're not as good), I can't see myself digging in to fix bugs. And even then, it still feels like a hard sell. I also feel like most apps that people might love enough to even consider diving into also have server components. If the company running the service shuts down, that's another barrier to setting up your own (assuming the backend pieces were even open sourced too!). Sure, it happens, but those tend to be very very exceptional cases.

juliendorra 11y ago
One of those great exception is Erherpad. The open source base helped launch a community then a full rewrite. Hopefully the hackpad fork will now be merged or at least some features will be back ported.

s73v3r 11y ago

It really depends on how big the community is. HackPad was open sourced; it hasn't been touched in months.