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My bigger concerns is that it creates dependency, prices go up, and you either deal with it, or you change systems which is hugely costly. FOSS as much as poss

My bigger concerns is that it creates dependency, prices go up, and you either deal with it, or you change systems which is hugely costly. FOSS as much as possible.

vkou 7y ago
FOSS is free if your time is worthless. There's plenty of situations in business where using it is an incredibly good idea. There's even more situations where you're better off just paying for a service.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  You can pay for third-party support based on FOSS, and you'll still avoid being locked in to a single supplier.
  - whatsmyusername 7y ago
    I'm indifferent on the supplier lock-in. Mainly because our biggest supplier is AWS and they're >%50 of the market.
  - vkou 7y ago
    1. You can, and it makes sense for FOSS projects with real support ecosystems, like RedHat, or for freemium FOSS projects, that explicitly sell support. 2. You can still be locked into a single-supplier when you pay for third-party FOSS support. In fact, most third-party FOSS support comes from a single supplier. 3. FOSS that doesn't have a sustainable business model attached to it rarely serves the needs of enterprises. There's FOSS alternatives to Sharepoint, but what's your FOSS alternative to Tableau? Salesforce? Slack? Will you actually save money by using it, compared to just paying a vendor?
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > There's FOSS alternatives to Sharepoint, but what's your FOSS alternative to Tableau? Salesforce? Slack? From a purely technical POV, I'm pretty sure that feasible alternatives exist to all of these, e.g. I don't think Tableau's data viz product does anything that couldn't also be done with relative ease in R. Of course, these commercial offerings extend way beyond the purely technical domain where FLOSS makes the most sense; but that has little to do with "sustainable business models" - R itself is plenty sustainable on its own - and a lot to do with extremely niche or obscure "needs of enterprises" that FLOSS projects are either not clearly aware of, or not very interested in supplying. Niche and obscure problem domains have always been problematic for the open source model, this is nothing new.
      - roel_v 7y ago
        "I don't think Tableau's data viz product does anything that couldn't also be done with relative ease in R." It's zingers like this that keep me coming back to threads like this one! "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
- whatsmyusername 7y ago
  You're getting downvoted but you're absolutely right. I use FOSS when it makes sense but 90% of the time the answer has been, 'just use what AWS has.'
- jonfw 7y ago
  Managed FOSS is the way to do it
- nnq 7y ago
  Nobody truly believes "FOSS is free"... sure there's cost, you just gotta figure out what the cost is for you! (that's the trick a "free" product has a unique price for each "buyer", here in lies the beauty and the opportunity of the game). There's no "market price" so it's tricky, but when you can compute the cost and it happens to be very low for your team (and preferably high for competitor's teams), you have a competitive advantages. OSS is all about leveraging "hidden" advantages agains competitors that have clear and obvious financial advantages over you. If you get it right, you win! Of course, if you don't like risks and don't like "uncomputable" prices, or "prices unique to each buyer", then sure, be conservative, and stay away from FOSS.
mathattack 7y ago
They screw you on the upsells.

My bigger concerns is that it creates dependency, prices go up, and you either deal with it, or you change systems which is hugely costly. FOSS as much as possible.

vkou 7y ago

FOSS is free if your time is worthless. There's plenty of situations in business where using it is an incredibly good idea. There's even more situations where you're better off just paying for a service.

zozbot234 7y ago
You can pay for third-party support based on FOSS, and you'll still avoid being locked in to a single supplier.
- whatsmyusername 7y ago
  I'm indifferent on the supplier lock-in. Mainly because our biggest supplier is AWS and they're >%50 of the market.
- vkou 7y ago
  1. You can, and it makes sense for FOSS projects with real support ecosystems, like RedHat, or for freemium FOSS projects, that explicitly sell support. 2. You can still be locked into a single-supplier when you pay for third-party FOSS support. In fact, most third-party FOSS support comes from a single supplier. 3. FOSS that doesn't have a sustainable business model attached to it rarely serves the needs of enterprises. There's FOSS alternatives to Sharepoint, but what's your FOSS alternative to Tableau? Salesforce? Slack? Will you actually save money by using it, compared to just paying a vendor?
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > There's FOSS alternatives to Sharepoint, but what's your FOSS alternative to Tableau? Salesforce? Slack? From a purely technical POV, I'm pretty sure that feasible alternatives exist to all of these, e.g. I don't think Tableau's data viz product does anything that couldn't also be done with relative ease in R. Of course, these commercial offerings extend way beyond the purely technical domain where FLOSS makes the most sense; but that has little to do with "sustainable business models" - R itself is plenty sustainable on its own - and a lot to do with extremely niche or obscure "needs of enterprises" that FLOSS projects are either not clearly aware of, or not very interested in supplying. Niche and obscure problem domains have always been problematic for the open source model, this is nothing new.
    - roel_v 7y ago
      "I don't think Tableau's data viz product does anything that couldn't also be done with relative ease in R." It's zingers like this that keep me coming back to threads like this one! "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."
whatsmyusername 7y ago
You're getting downvoted but you're absolutely right. I use FOSS when it makes sense but 90% of the time the answer has been, 'just use what AWS has.'
jonfw 7y ago
Managed FOSS is the way to do it
nnq 7y ago
Nobody truly believes "FOSS is free"... sure there's cost, you just gotta figure out what the cost is for you! (that's the trick a "free" product has a unique price for each "buyer", here in lies the beauty and the opportunity of the game). There's no "market price" so it's tricky, but when you can compute the cost and it happens to be very low for your team (and preferably high for competitor's teams), you have a competitive advantages. OSS is all about leveraging "hidden" advantages agains competitors that have clear and obvious financial advantages over you. If you get it right, you win! Of course, if you don't like risks and don't like "uncomputable" prices, or "prices unique to each buyer", then sure, be conservative, and stay away from FOSS.

mathattack 7y ago

They screw you on the upsells.