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In your opinion, what is a valid reason for software to be non-open source? Sure, saying the software doesn't "deserve" to be open source might be a bit extrem
by chrisshroba 9y ago
In your opinion, what is a valid reason for software to be non-open source? Sure, saying the software doesn't "deserve" to be open source might be a bit extreme, but I keep seeing the sentiment on HN that free and open source is the only allowable route and people who want to charge for their software are to be demonized. I'm curious under what circumstances you think it is allowable for a company to profit off of software their engineers were paid to write?
- burner5308 9y agoThere's no reason for any software not to be open source, aside from greed.
- d33 9y agoThere seems to be a lot of confusion around free software and open source. You can sell open source software (as a matter of fact, you can sell free software too). First of all, open source only means that source is available - the license is up to the developer though and it might as well be paid for commercial use etc. "Free" has two meanings - "free of charge" and "free as in freedom". I'm not arguing for "free of charge" - while it's nice to have software that you don't have to pay for, I could imagine, say, buying Microsoft Windows if I had access to the source code and could hack it as I go. "free as in freedom" means that I can not only access the code, but also redistribute it and use it in any way I see fit. This doesn't mean that the developers can't sell it though - they can sell support, extra features, hosting and so on. There are ways to profit from free/open source software. I could as well imagine Gitlab Foundation and Gitlab Ltd, where one provides the core and the other non-free modules that cover enterprise use cases. I don't like their current scheme though.