4 ms·

Many succeed with proprietary software while others worry and don't ship.

hjek 8y ago
Studies have shown that most people consider arguments based solely on weasel words completely meaningless.
chongli 8y ago
Proprietary software is a cousin to technical debt. You're trading expedience for future risk. You simply never know when the copyright holder will fold up shop and leave you in the lurch. Edit: If you think this is just an abstract risk, remember that Google shuts down popular and incredibly useful products so often it's become a meme around here.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Every decision is a trade-off. Proprietary software with support from a vendor can greatly speed up your product viability and market profitability. For most companies, and especially startups, that is far more important than the very unlikely risk that a vendor completely disappears overnight, and the even more unlikely risk that their software also stops working completely before you can migrate to something else.
  - chongli 8y ago
    The vendor disappearing overnight is only one of many risks from using proprietary software. Others include the vendor discontinuing the product, taking the product in a radically different direction, the company being acquired, or simply changing the licensing model (see Adobe Creative Cloud) to dramatically increase the costs of using the software. Look, right now I am working for a company that is in the midst of attempting to transition out of a very old source code and release management system and they're having a hell of a time doing it. That system happens to be proprietary and the support plus licensing fees are astronomical while the actual tech support is abysmal. Yes, the risk may seem like an easy tradeoff when you're starting out and you need to ship and you don't have any market share to worry about. It's a whole different story when you're dealing with a very clunky, yet very profitable legacy system that you're not allowed to fix because it's proprietary and yet your business depends on it.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      Sure, but that's my point: weigh the actual risks. How big is the company you're working for? Could they have gotten that big in the first place without using these tools? Companies change as they scale and solutions that worked when they were young will almost always need to change as they grow, so I don't see that as a particularly bad situation. It's a cycle of constant change management and risk mitigation. Usually the bigger company has the resources to make changes while a startup trying to plan for 100x future size usually ends up limiting its own growth.
    - aidenn0 8y ago
      > The vendor disappearing overnight is only one of many risks from using proprietary software. Others include... > the vendor discontinuing the product This is not a zero risk proposition with open source software either; your costs go up significantly if you have to start maintaining a legacy codebase. > taking the product in a radically different direction See above; if you just want to run the old version, proprietary software lets you do this as well. > the company being acquired This is definitely the biggest risk with Datomic; if Cognitect decides to EOL Datomic, there is a very high chance that they open source it (see the various free software they develop already), but if they are acquired by Oracle that chance becomes zero. > or simply changing the licensing model (see Adobe Creative Cloud) to dramatically increase the costs of using the software. Datomic licenses are perpetual I believe, so not a risk with Datomic.
      - fnordsensei 8y ago
        > Datomic licenses are perpetual I believe, so not a risk with Datomic. On-prem is perpetual with a year of maintenance (which can be extended), while Datomic Cloud is integrated with AWS and charged and licensed like other AWS services: month-by-month.
        pritambaral 8y ago
        Could one transition from Datomic Cloud to an on-prem setup on self-managed EC2 instances?
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Here's a trick though: for a lot of companies, startups in particular, their expected lifetime is comparable to the expected lifetime of the proprietary software/services they depend on. It's quite likely that they'll fold themselves before their vendor does. I don't like this much (especially the part when an exit-oriented startup will say they want to "change the world" and/or they "care about the users", but it's how things are.
- ken 8y ago
  Open source projects stop being developed, too. It's nice to have access to the source code, but in practice whenever it's happened to me, I don't have the resources to maintain even one abandoned program on my own.
- dominotw 8y ago
  I think the greater risk is vendor raising the contract price to something you can't afford. Because now they know you are locked in. I 've seen this happen time and again.

hjek 8y ago

Studies have shown that most people consider arguments based solely on weasel words completely meaningless.

Proprietary software is a cousin to technical debt. You're trading expedience for future risk. You simply never know when the copyright holder will fold up shop and leave you in the lurch. Edit: If you think this is just an abstract risk, remember that Google shuts down popular and incredibly useful products so often it's become a meme around here.

manigandham 8y ago
Every decision is a trade-off. Proprietary software with support from a vendor can greatly speed up your product viability and market profitability. For most companies, and especially startups, that is far more important than the very unlikely risk that a vendor completely disappears overnight, and the even more unlikely risk that their software also stops working completely before you can migrate to something else.
- chongli 8y ago
  The vendor disappearing overnight is only one of many risks from using proprietary software. Others include the vendor discontinuing the product, taking the product in a radically different direction, the company being acquired, or simply changing the licensing model (see Adobe Creative Cloud) to dramatically increase the costs of using the software. Look, right now I am working for a company that is in the midst of attempting to transition out of a very old source code and release management system and they're having a hell of a time doing it. That system happens to be proprietary and the support plus licensing fees are astronomical while the actual tech support is abysmal. Yes, the risk may seem like an easy tradeoff when you're starting out and you need to ship and you don't have any market share to worry about. It's a whole different story when you're dealing with a very clunky, yet very profitable legacy system that you're not allowed to fix because it's proprietary and yet your business depends on it.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    Sure, but that's my point: weigh the actual risks. How big is the company you're working for? Could they have gotten that big in the first place without using these tools? Companies change as they scale and solutions that worked when they were young will almost always need to change as they grow, so I don't see that as a particularly bad situation. It's a cycle of constant change management and risk mitigation. Usually the bigger company has the resources to make changes while a startup trying to plan for 100x future size usually ends up limiting its own growth.
  - aidenn0 8y ago
    > The vendor disappearing overnight is only one of many risks from using proprietary software. Others include... > the vendor discontinuing the product This is not a zero risk proposition with open source software either; your costs go up significantly if you have to start maintaining a legacy codebase. > taking the product in a radically different direction See above; if you just want to run the old version, proprietary software lets you do this as well. > the company being acquired This is definitely the biggest risk with Datomic; if Cognitect decides to EOL Datomic, there is a very high chance that they open source it (see the various free software they develop already), but if they are acquired by Oracle that chance becomes zero. > or simply changing the licensing model (see Adobe Creative Cloud) to dramatically increase the costs of using the software. Datomic licenses are perpetual I believe, so not a risk with Datomic.
    - fnordsensei 8y ago
      > Datomic licenses are perpetual I believe, so not a risk with Datomic. On-prem is perpetual with a year of maintenance (which can be extended), while Datomic Cloud is integrated with AWS and charged and licensed like other AWS services: month-by-month.
      - pritambaral 8y ago
        Could one transition from Datomic Cloud to an on-prem setup on self-managed EC2 instances?
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Here's a trick though: for a lot of companies, startups in particular, their expected lifetime is comparable to the expected lifetime of the proprietary software/services they depend on. It's quite likely that they'll fold themselves before their vendor does. I don't like this much (especially the part when an exit-oriented startup will say they want to "change the world" and/or they "care about the users", but it's how things are.
ken 8y ago
Open source projects stop being developed, too. It's nice to have access to the source code, but in practice whenever it's happened to me, I don't have the resources to maintain even one abandoned program on my own.
dominotw 8y ago
I think the greater risk is vendor raising the contract price to something you can't afford. Because now they know you are locked in. I 've seen this happen time and again.