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> Open source software is by definition commoditized. I thought commodity means something that can be produced by many different companies without substantial
by justicezyx 8y ago
> Open source software is by definition commoditized.
I thought commodity means something that can be produced by many different companies without substantial differences in cost, quality, functionality etc.
Open source software usually is siganificant in their complexity and utility. Also they have strong gluing effect to customers' own code.
To say they are commodity in the sense that they are free of charge, seems not the right way of thinking them as commodity.
- greycol 8y agoYou can't treat open source software as a commodity but you can treat any version of open source software as a commodity. i.e. debian and ubuntu may not be interchangable commodities but ubuntu 16.04 from a torrent vs given from a friend vs downloaded from a mirror are interchangeable. The services around opensource software such as troubleshooting or being able to spin up a server without having to supply anything but a password (and cash) are what makes a specific version differentiable, not who supplied the bits of that version. Since opensource is free and anyone can distribute it any 1 version is a commodity.