6 ms·

What history would that be?

chmod775 4y ago
Lots of examples of open source replacing closed-source in recent history, hardly any for the other way around. Plenty of examples of proprietary becoming open-source as well. The only trend that runs counter to this is the emergence of SaaS, most of which rely heavily on open source themselves. It's hard to compete with established FOSS, which is why companies tend to embrace and build upon it, strengthening its position even further. The web stack is full of examples: Web servers*, OBS killing everything else, ActiveX, Flash, Mosaic, and also lots of smaller examples related to how we interact with various file formats/codecs. If you wanted to start developing a new closed-source web server, streaming software, alternative to ffmpeg, programming language, compiler, browser engine, or even mobile operating system, people would probably call you insane. Trying to beat the open-source incumbents with something closed-source and possibly paid looks impossible. * I am amazed Microsoft IIS is still barely hanging on.
- ma2rten 4y ago
  A lot of this is because large companies which make proprietary software, such as Google, invested in the software you listed. I am not sure if the same would happen in the case of hardware. There is more upfront investment. The culture is different, more secretive.
- GoblinSlayer 4y ago
  I guess, IIS integrates with greater ecosystem, while FOSS tends to be all standalone programs.
- morbia 4y ago
  I think 'hardly any of the other way around' isn't really fair, particularly when SaaS is clearly the most popular way to distribute software these days. Your examples are almost entirely focused on the tools to build software, and there open source truly has 'won'. However, what do we all do when we get that tooling? We build SaaS software running on proprietary IaaS cloud environments. The big players know there is no money in proprietary tooling because startups will gravitate to free software. Even then, that is often free as in beer (vscode and chrome spring to mind). > If you wanted to start developing a new closed-source web server, streaming software, alternative to ffmpeg, programming language, compiler, browser engine, or even mobile operating system, people would probably call you insane. Absolutely, but people would also call you insane for trying to start a business where you open source your IP. Honestly I think for consumer level software open source has truly and utterly lost. All consumer operating systems with non-negligible marketshare are proprietary (including android), apps on iOS and android are overwhelmingly closed source, and SaaS is the dominant business model for everything else. Hell, you can't even look at the source code of modern websites without seeing a wall of minified/obfuscated js junk.
  - chmod775 4y ago
    > Your examples are almost entirely focused on the tools to build software All save of the things I listed aren't just a tool used by developers and have user-facing components, but yeah: that's my bubble. However if most of our tools, libraries, and technologies become open source, then inevitably end-user software will become more open-source as well. > All consumer operating systems with non-negligible marketshare are proprietary (including android) That's the purist way to look at it. I can understand it when it comes to free-as-in-freedom software vs. proprietary software, but for open source vs proprietary it doesn't make much sense. It is a sliding scale and it matters how much of the software stack someone is using is open source software. If you open some random "SaaS" website nowadays, most of the code running on your computer will be open source, as will most of the software running on the remote server. The only things that aren't open source will be whatever the SaaS company hacked together on their open source stack, and possibly the operating system your mostly open-source browser is running on. In the case of Android most if not all of the code executing in that moment would be open source as well. Take further apart their JS blobs and it's just 90% libraries they grabbed from NPM. Take apart their server side and it's more of the same. The point is that the amount of open source code people are running is increasing. Saying "but a lot of software has closed-source parts!" is being blind to the change that occurred. If you just care about OSS as opposed to FOSS, you likely either care about being able to audit (even crowdsourcing it) what you're running on your computer, or you simply believe that it is the best way to develop software. In recent years we've had both a better shot at auditing what we're running as well increasing collaboration between software developers.
    - chmod775 4y ago
      %s/All save of the things/All save one of the things/
29083011397778 4y ago
I'm into tech as a hobby, not as a career, so take this with a grain of salt: Android ate every other mobile OS excluding iOS, in part because it was OS and close-enough to free for OEMs. I can't even think of a closed-source webserver off-hand. Even the fine people at Redmond had to offer Linux support on Azure. The vast majority of the web runs of FLOSS. FLOSS wins when working with OEMs. Only with consumers does the new-shiny-proprietary win.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Which Android vendor is successful in any meaninful way shipping bare bones AOSP? Of course free beer is great for OEMs.
  - mburee 4y ago
    Android without the closed source Google parts is pretty useless for the average consumer. E.g. just having each app open a persistent connection in the background for it to receive notifications instead of one centralized one is pretty bad for battery life.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    There is a little country called China that you might have heard of that has plenty of manufacturers selling AOSP based phones with no Google software.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Yeah, they also sell plenty of pirated Windows copies.
  - 29083011397778 4y ago
    The Free part of Android is part of the reason it won. Windows Phone OEMs couldn't modify the system, while OEMs like Samsung could (and at the time, did) heavily modify the OS. That's presumably why my 2016 Civic used Android under the hood instead of QNX. The latter would be faster and more responsive, but Android is free, easy enough to force into the shape Honda needed, and possibly even gave them an easier time finding people familiar with the more inner workings of the OS.
Barrin92 4y ago
Linux, android, almost all databases, web frameworks, programming languages, chromium/electron, the most popular editor in the world and .net from Microsoft of all places (which once declared OSS to be "communism"), the list goes on. just go back a few decades and remember people paying for Borland Turbo C. The long arc of history is very clearly bending towards open source software.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Open source Android is useless if you want to sell a phone outside of China without Google Play services.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    I always find the "if you discount China" qualifier funny. Every fifth person on the planet is Chinese mate, much of the Chinese tech ecosystem is built on top of OSS, it's been a great equalizer and accelerator.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Maybe so. But it doesn’t help most of the rest of the world.
- qwytw 4y ago
  Software seems to be very different from most other industries in this regard. Companies which focus on enterprise have generally found it easier to make money from consulting, SaaS or providing other complementary services rather than selling software outright, because it’s generally cheaper to take an off the shelf open-source product and make money by customizing according to your customers needs. If we are talking about tools (programming languages, web frameworks databases) there is little incentive for companies not share their improvements or full projects with everyone if they are not planning to make money from selling it directly. E.g. it’s not like open-sourcing React had any-negative business impact for Facebook, the opposite, people worked for free to improve their internal tools and it made it easier for them to attract new talent. Google created Android and Chromium because it allowed them to increase their ad-revenue and they made them open-source because it was much cheaper to build top of projects which which already worked. I.e. they gained more by open source software than they lost by giving away their improvements for free, which is fine because they never intend to make money from them directly and having access to the OSS bits didn’t make it that much easier for other companies to compete with Google in the core market. I don’t see how would this play out with hardware. If you designed a CPU core which is much better than your competitors what would you gain by giving it away? If making chips is not part of your core business and you just want a product which fits your needs better (e.g. equivalent situation of a software company which allows it’s employs to submit patches to Linux/Posgres/etc.) how would you even do that? You don’t have the expertise or equipment needed to produce chips and if you did it meant that you made a significant investment to be in that position and therefore have no incentive to share your improvements with anyone).

Lots of examples of open source replacing closed-source in recent history, hardly any for the other way around. Plenty of examples of proprietary becoming open-source as well. The only trend that runs counter to this is the emergence of SaaS, most of which rely heavily on open source themselves. It's hard to compete with established FOSS, which is why companies tend to embrace and build upon it, strengthening its position even further. The web stack is full of examples: Web servers*, OBS killing everything else, ActiveX, Flash, Mosaic, and also lots of smaller examples related to how we interact with various file formats/codecs. If you wanted to start developing a new closed-source web server, streaming software, alternative to ffmpeg, programming language, compiler, browser engine, or even mobile operating system, people would probably call you insane. Trying to beat the open-source incumbents with something closed-source and possibly paid looks impossible. * I am amazed Microsoft IIS is still barely hanging on.

ma2rten 4y ago
A lot of this is because large companies which make proprietary software, such as Google, invested in the software you listed. I am not sure if the same would happen in the case of hardware. There is more upfront investment. The culture is different, more secretive.
GoblinSlayer 4y ago
I guess, IIS integrates with greater ecosystem, while FOSS tends to be all standalone programs.
morbia 4y ago
I think 'hardly any of the other way around' isn't really fair, particularly when SaaS is clearly the most popular way to distribute software these days. Your examples are almost entirely focused on the tools to build software, and there open source truly has 'won'. However, what do we all do when we get that tooling? We build SaaS software running on proprietary IaaS cloud environments. The big players know there is no money in proprietary tooling because startups will gravitate to free software. Even then, that is often free as in beer (vscode and chrome spring to mind). > If you wanted to start developing a new closed-source web server, streaming software, alternative to ffmpeg, programming language, compiler, browser engine, or even mobile operating system, people would probably call you insane. Absolutely, but people would also call you insane for trying to start a business where you open source your IP. Honestly I think for consumer level software open source has truly and utterly lost. All consumer operating systems with non-negligible marketshare are proprietary (including android), apps on iOS and android are overwhelmingly closed source, and SaaS is the dominant business model for everything else. Hell, you can't even look at the source code of modern websites without seeing a wall of minified/obfuscated js junk.
- chmod775 4y ago
  > Your examples are almost entirely focused on the tools to build software All save of the things I listed aren't just a tool used by developers and have user-facing components, but yeah: that's my bubble. However if most of our tools, libraries, and technologies become open source, then inevitably end-user software will become more open-source as well. > All consumer operating systems with non-negligible marketshare are proprietary (including android) That's the purist way to look at it. I can understand it when it comes to free-as-in-freedom software vs. proprietary software, but for open source vs proprietary it doesn't make much sense. It is a sliding scale and it matters how much of the software stack someone is using is open source software. If you open some random "SaaS" website nowadays, most of the code running on your computer will be open source, as will most of the software running on the remote server. The only things that aren't open source will be whatever the SaaS company hacked together on their open source stack, and possibly the operating system your mostly open-source browser is running on. In the case of Android most if not all of the code executing in that moment would be open source as well. Take further apart their JS blobs and it's just 90% libraries they grabbed from NPM. Take apart their server side and it's more of the same. The point is that the amount of open source code people are running is increasing. Saying "but a lot of software has closed-source parts!" is being blind to the change that occurred. If you just care about OSS as opposed to FOSS, you likely either care about being able to audit (even crowdsourcing it) what you're running on your computer, or you simply believe that it is the best way to develop software. In recent years we've had both a better shot at auditing what we're running as well increasing collaboration between software developers.
  - chmod775 4y ago
    %s/All save of the things/All save one of the things/

29083011397778 4y ago

I'm into tech as a hobby, not as a career, so take this with a grain of salt: Android ate every other mobile OS excluding iOS, in part because it was OS and close-enough to free for OEMs. I can't even think of a closed-source webserver off-hand. Even the fine people at Redmond had to offer Linux support on Azure. The vast majority of the web runs of FLOSS. FLOSS wins when working with OEMs. Only with consumers does the new-shiny-proprietary win.

pjmlp 4y ago
Which Android vendor is successful in any meaninful way shipping bare bones AOSP? Of course free beer is great for OEMs.
- mburee 4y ago
  Android without the closed source Google parts is pretty useless for the average consumer. E.g. just having each app open a persistent connection in the background for it to receive notifications instead of one centralized one is pretty bad for battery life.
- scarface74 4y ago
  There is a little country called China that you might have heard of that has plenty of manufacturers selling AOSP based phones with no Google software.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Yeah, they also sell plenty of pirated Windows copies.
- 29083011397778 4y ago
  The Free part of Android is part of the reason it won. Windows Phone OEMs couldn't modify the system, while OEMs like Samsung could (and at the time, did) heavily modify the OS. That's presumably why my 2016 Civic used Android under the hood instead of QNX. The latter would be faster and more responsive, but Android is free, easy enough to force into the shape Honda needed, and possibly even gave them an easier time finding people familiar with the more inner workings of the OS.

Barrin92 4y ago

Linux, android, almost all databases, web frameworks, programming languages, chromium/electron, the most popular editor in the world and .net from Microsoft of all places (which once declared OSS to be "communism"), the list goes on. just go back a few decades and remember people paying for Borland Turbo C. The long arc of history is very clearly bending towards open source software.

scarface74 4y ago
Open source Android is useless if you want to sell a phone outside of China without Google Play services.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I always find the "if you discount China" qualifier funny. Every fifth person on the planet is Chinese mate, much of the Chinese tech ecosystem is built on top of OSS, it's been a great equalizer and accelerator.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Maybe so. But it doesn’t help most of the rest of the world.
qwytw 4y ago
Software seems to be very different from most other industries in this regard. Companies which focus on enterprise have generally found it easier to make money from consulting, SaaS or providing other complementary services rather than selling software outright, because it’s generally cheaper to take an off the shelf open-source product and make money by customizing according to your customers needs. If we are talking about tools (programming languages, web frameworks databases) there is little incentive for companies not share their improvements or full projects with everyone if they are not planning to make money from selling it directly. E.g. it’s not like open-sourcing React had any-negative business impact for Facebook, the opposite, people worked for free to improve their internal tools and it made it easier for them to attract new talent. Google created Android and Chromium because it allowed them to increase their ad-revenue and they made them open-source because it was much cheaper to build top of projects which which already worked. I.e. they gained more by open source software than they lost by giving away their improvements for free, which is fine because they never intend to make money from them directly and having access to the OSS bits didn’t make it that much easier for other companies to compete with Google in the core market. I don’t see how would this play out with hardware. If you designed a CPU core which is much better than your competitors what would you gain by giving it away? If making chips is not part of your core business and you just want a product which fits your needs better (e.g. equivalent situation of a software company which allows it’s employs to submit patches to Linux/Posgres/etc.) how would you even do that? You don’t have the expertise or equipment needed to produce chips and if you did it meant that you made a significant investment to be in that position and therefore have no incentive to share your improvements with anyone).