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>but the existence of large corporate ones like Chrome, Android, .net, VS Code, Tensorflow and lots more prove that exerting tight central control while being f

by jasode 5y ago

>but the existence of large corporate ones like Chrome, Android, .net, VS Code, Tensorflow and lots more prove that exerting tight central control while being fully open source is very much possible. All of your examples are subsidized by a parent corporate sponsor that makes billions from something else. Chrome can be "free as in beer" and Chromium source can be "free as in libre" because Google/Alphabet make billions in ads from a search engine. It's easy for MS to release VSCode and .NET for free if billions are earned from MS Office, Windows, SQL Server, etc. Wolfram doesn't have another product that rakes in billions such that any licensing income loss from hypothetically open sourcing Mathematica would be an insignificant rounding error.

mountainriver 5y ago
There are a bunch of smaller companies that open source a community edition and upsell to SaaS. Confluent and elasticsearch are the first that come to mind
- detaro 5y ago
  It's telling that one of your examples is one that took the step to relicense their product under a not-open-source license.
  - mountainriver 5y ago
    Take a look at the CNCF, all of those products are open source and many of them are lucrative. Elasticsearch is still open source they just wanted to buck companies like Amazon from taking advantage of them, which is fine by me
    - detaro 5y ago
      Elastic search is not open source anymore. It's not under an open source license. I'm all for open source products (I both work on and make large use of such products), but this "just open source it, you can make a business out of it anyways!" without further constraints is IMHO misguided. Open-source business models are challenging, and that needs to be recognized.
chubot 5y ago
Yes, and I'd also add that being a rounding error probably isn't enough to justify the business decision. Usually the reason that big companies open source big longstanding projects is to commoditize a complement of their main business: - Search makes billions of dollars, and you need a web browser to search, so Google should make a fast and secure web browser (not to mention you can fill it with all sorts of dark patterns!) - Users purchase Windows to run applications like spreadsheets. We should offer a free high quality IDE so that more applications can be made, increasing the value of the ecosystem. - Java: Sun sells hardware, and software is the complement to hardware, so we should make a new programming language (???). To be honest, this one always seemed suspect, and maybe that explains why Sun went out of business :-/ https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
maccard 5y ago
> Wolfram doesn't have another product that rakes in billions such that any licensing income loss from hypothetically open sourcing Mathematica would be an insignificant rounding error. Right - and _that_ is what this post should say, not that it's not possible to have a centralized model of development.

by jasode 5y ago

mountainriver 5y ago

There are a bunch of smaller companies that open source a community edition and upsell to SaaS. Confluent and elasticsearch are the first that come to mind

detaro 5y ago
It's telling that one of your examples is one that took the step to relicense their product under a not-open-source license.
- mountainriver 5y ago
  Take a look at the CNCF, all of those products are open source and many of them are lucrative. Elasticsearch is still open source they just wanted to buck companies like Amazon from taking advantage of them, which is fine by me
  - detaro 5y ago
    Elastic search is not open source anymore. It's not under an open source license. I'm all for open source products (I both work on and make large use of such products), but this "just open source it, you can make a business out of it anyways!" without further constraints is IMHO misguided. Open-source business models are challenging, and that needs to be recognized.

chubot 5y ago

Yes, and I'd also add that being a rounding error probably isn't enough to justify the business decision. Usually the reason that big companies open source big longstanding projects is to commoditize a complement of their main business: - Search makes billions of dollars, and you need a web browser to search, so Google should make a fast and secure web browser (not to mention you can fill it with all sorts of dark patterns!) - Users purchase Windows to run applications like spreadsheets. We should offer a free high quality IDE so that more applications can be made, increasing the value of the ecosystem. - Java: Sun sells hardware, and software is the complement to hardware, so we should make a new programming language (???). To be honest, this one always seemed suspect, and maybe that explains why Sun went out of business :-/ https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.gwern.net/Complement https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/

maccard 5y ago

> Wolfram doesn't have another product that rakes in billions such that any licensing income loss from hypothetically open sourcing Mathematica would be an insignificant rounding error. Right - and _that_ is what this post should say, not that it's not possible to have a centralized model of development.