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"backup" is one of the main reasons I prefer open source. Even if it is funded by one company now (and I pay them) there is some sort of continuum plan if they

"backup" is one of the main reasons I prefer open source. Even if it is funded by one company now (and I pay them) there is some sort of continuum plan if they go bust. I am not immediately screwed and I can consider options such as self-maintenance, forks or a migration. This also applies if they change the terms or price.

bombcar 6y ago
The amount of monkey-patching I've done to production systems where I don't even have the code (Java is great for this) is immense.
- laurent92 6y ago
  I personally believe Java wouldn’t have been successful 5 years earlier, during the time when everyone was encrypting their code. It was an inacceptable trade-off before Internet. After internet, most software is partly online anyway.
laurent92 6y ago
Maintenance is a really good point, but we haven’t found a way to monetize it. If I gave my software as OSS to paid customers, I’d immediately lose most of my other sales and give my little implementation secrets to my competitors. I’d like to be able to say “And for +15%, get the source and ability to compile and fix forever”. And not lose my business in the process.
- bombcar 6y ago
  You don’t have to use a true open source license- simply a “shared source” or something with a clause making it BSD when the business ceases operations or similar.
  - laurent92 6y ago
    But then, my customer has an interest in making me go out of business.
    - kevincox 6y ago
      I doubt it. If you are providing a valuable service it is most likely the the customers interest to keep you alive and maintaining the software, especially since you are likely pooling the funds from a large number of companies. If you go out of business the customers will need to quickly figure out how to maintain the thing themselves, and I would expect that most companies won't "give back" so the cost on each user probably goes up.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    > business ceases operations This is far too specific. What if they try to 10x the price on the next contract renewal. Or change the terms dramatically such that it is no longer suitable for our use case. I would want to have some sort of shared source agreement but that is still more restrictive than FOSS as the community can't work together to maintain it, so 100% of the burden of updates and maintenance falls upon us. But even this is wildly better than just loosing access (or being forced to pay).

bombcar 6y ago

The amount of monkey-patching I've done to production systems where I don't even have the code (Java is great for this) is immense.

laurent92 6y ago
I personally believe Java wouldn’t have been successful 5 years earlier, during the time when everyone was encrypting their code. It was an inacceptable trade-off before Internet. After internet, most software is partly online anyway.

laurent92 6y ago

Maintenance is a really good point, but we haven’t found a way to monetize it. If I gave my software as OSS to paid customers, I’d immediately lose most of my other sales and give my little implementation secrets to my competitors. I’d like to be able to say “And for +15%, get the source and ability to compile and fix forever”. And not lose my business in the process.

bombcar 6y ago
You don’t have to use a true open source license- simply a “shared source” or something with a clause making it BSD when the business ceases operations or similar.
- laurent92 6y ago
  But then, my customer has an interest in making me go out of business.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    I doubt it. If you are providing a valuable service it is most likely the the customers interest to keep you alive and maintaining the software, especially since you are likely pooling the funds from a large number of companies. If you go out of business the customers will need to quickly figure out how to maintain the thing themselves, and I would expect that most companies won't "give back" so the cost on each user probably goes up.
- kevincox 6y ago
  > business ceases operations This is far too specific. What if they try to 10x the price on the next contract renewal. Or change the terms dramatically such that it is no longer suitable for our use case. I would want to have some sort of shared source agreement but that is still more restrictive than FOSS as the community can't work together to maintain it, so 100% of the burden of updates and maintenance falls upon us. But even this is wildly better than just loosing access (or being forced to pay).