4 ms·

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-

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/

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/