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It also has upsides. It might be archaic, but the code is mostly self-contained, there are usually no layers of open source that might make behavior difficult t

by js8 6y ago

It also has upsides. It might be archaic, but the code is mostly self-contained, there are usually no layers of open source that might make behavior difficult to understand. (And for problems with middleware you just call the vendor.) Programs are typically designed to be algorithmically simple, the complexity mostly comes from history and changing business requirements. Mainframes are surprisingly transparent systems, if you learn where to look, compared to Unixes. There are many logging and tracing facilities that run all the time. For these reasons, some people actually enjoy it more to work with these systems.

Yetanfou 6y ago
> there are usually no layers of open source that might make behavior difficult to understand Ehhhh.... this in contrast to closed systems where there are layers of closed source which lead to all sorts of unexpected behaviour without the recourse of looking under the hood to find out what is going wrong. Closed systems are harder to debug than open source systems.
- js8 6y ago
  In my experience, it depends on other factors than just whether the SW is open source or not. Documentation helps, age of software helps (which means certain stability with respect to change and less bugs), simple architecture helps. I generally like open source, but I am skeptical when it is used as a tool to save costs by companies. (Apache foundation projects are IMHO the worst offenders.) In some sense, commercial software is the devil you know.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    > In some sense, commercial software is the devil you know. No, older, established projects or products are the devils you know, whether they're free software or proprietary products. Take for example Debian Stable which is, as its name implies, stable but seen as fairly stodgy and unexciting. Stodgy and unexciting is what you want in a business environment. The mere fact that there are far newer releases with loads of new features (and bugs) does not mean that you need to use them, just wait for the next stable release.

by js8 6y ago

Yetanfou 6y ago

> there are usually no layers of open source that might make behavior difficult to understand Ehhhh.... this in contrast to closed systems where there are layers of closed source which lead to all sorts of unexpected behaviour without the recourse of looking under the hood to find out what is going wrong. Closed systems are harder to debug than open source systems.

js8 6y ago
In my experience, it depends on other factors than just whether the SW is open source or not. Documentation helps, age of software helps (which means certain stability with respect to change and less bugs), simple architecture helps. I generally like open source, but I am skeptical when it is used as a tool to save costs by companies. (Apache foundation projects are IMHO the worst offenders.) In some sense, commercial software is the devil you know.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  > In some sense, commercial software is the devil you know. No, older, established projects or products are the devils you know, whether they're free software or proprietary products. Take for example Debian Stable which is, as its name implies, stable but seen as fairly stodgy and unexciting. Stodgy and unexciting is what you want in a business environment. The mere fact that there are far newer releases with loads of new features (and bugs) does not mean that you need to use them, just wait for the next stable release.