3 ms·
This happens because our companies basically want vendors with open code, not open source. Open source implies a model of collaboration between different organ
by softwaredoug 3y ago
This happens because our companies basically want vendors with open code, not open source.
Open source implies a model of collaboration between different organizations. A single vendor, even with an OSI license, does not an open source project make. And we have only ourselves to blame. Most companies can’t spare their developers for open source development - it’s time consuming and frankly open source is the outlier in how we think about code ownership and development. It’s hard to be a good steward. It’s hard to pitch the upside of such an abstract investment. In the end, actually want vendors, strongly opinionated solutions, managed by a single entity, but vendors we hire to let us treat their code as open and extensible.
I wonder if this era of single-vendor “open source” will be looked at not because it redefined open source but because it changes how we think about vendors, expecting certain types of code access and transparency.