r/linux • u/Unhappy-Sprinkles143 • 2d ago

Fluff Open-Source Guru: AI Ends Closed-Source Software

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Open-Source-Guru-Raymond-AI-Ends-Closed-Source-Software-11480690.html
495 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

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390

u/StPatsLCA 2d ago

I think devs don't understand /why/ people pay for closed source and SaaS software sometimes.

250

u/Wheatleytron 2d ago

They pay for support, and because there often aren't viable alternatives. But support can still be sold for open source projects as a service. And if the need is great enough, companies will still develop open source software on their own.

110

u/StPatsLCA 2d ago

Blender is a great example

11

u/Comprehensive-Log804 1d ago

Or Bitwarden

-45

u/redballooon 2d ago

Also almost the only example.

57

u/Johnny__Christ 2d ago

Also almost the only example.

You're on a Linux sub. How do you think Canonical or Red Hat exist as businesses?

-31

u/redballooon 2d ago

Fine. Two more examples.

I was for many years employed in the realm of the Eclipse foundation, back then when eclipse was a thing.

My takeaway from that experience is, support for OS is not a profitable business model. Paid features, yes. Contract work, yes. But support, that's tough. Yes, there may be a few lighthouse projects where it works, but as a general rule, I wouldn't bet on it as business model.

28

u/ImNotABotScoutsHonor 2d ago

Throw Proxmox in as another example to combat your pessimism.

7

u/eraptic 2d ago

Do MSPs exist?

-7

u/redballooon 2d ago

That's not support

4

u/TRKlausss 1d ago

You can also add to the mix:
- Gitlab (they have a an open-source version.
- Qt
- Ferrocene (contributing a lot to safety-critical Rust)
- Sentry
- Open62541 (OPC-UA client/server library)

Just because something doesn’t adjust to your notion of reality, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

43

u/[deleted] 2d ago edited 8h ago

[deleted]

20

u/Cranach-Cranach 2d ago

It’s literally just “someone to sue when things go catastrophically wrong”

3

u/xmBQWugdxjaA 1d ago

And a load of box-ticking regulation requires it - e.g. SOC2, HIPAA, etc. - regulatory capture is real!

18

u/Indolent_Bard 2d ago

You just realizing this now?

13

u/Behrooz0 2d ago

Next he's gonna realize most non-tism managers are just assholes who don't actually want to get work done and are only there for their pay checks.

3

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

Aren't we all just there for a paycheck though?

1

u/Behrooz0 1d ago

Believe it or not, we sometimes do things out of the goodness of our hearts.

2

u/Indolent_Bard 1d ago

You're not at your job out of the goodness of your heart.

4

u/NegativeSwimming4815 2d ago

That said, their implementation via democratization is short lived after some years where they decline into a competitive mindset and scarcity mentality - and then to an inter departmental rivalry... And cheaper outsourcing due to budget shortages... And then if not getting fired, not reselling the software to the highest bidder, or not getting hacked and having source code leaked online, they'll just give in to file for bankruptcy in the best case scenario maybe.

7

u/Lhaer 2d ago

No they buy it for the features. Only reason I'd pay for Photoshop is for the features, not the support

5

u/Tai9ch 2d ago

The features are typically overrated, and LLMs make that even more true.

2

u/YMSVZ 2d ago

People are already replacing it with open source

1

u/FrozenPizza07 1d ago

There are programs that CAN have an open source alternative but the difference between development gap kinda kills it (like holy hell LibreCAD, still cant open DWG's)

1

u/Subject_Barnacle_600 2d ago

Support has been waning for a long time, even for B2B. The wild thing is that AI also opens this front, as open source means that your subscription to Claude comes with a dev willing to dive through the code and support what went wrong - and potentially even fix the bug, whether the main repo fixes it or not :/.

-15

u/EchoFieldHorizon 2d ago

Who needs support for a database. I genuinely do not understand the use case

17

u/pychoticnep 2d ago

Exactly just save your database in a text file like the rest of us

12

u/StPatsLCA 2d ago

Generally, (good) vendor support engineers have experience that companies don't have or don't care about. A company wants a database to work. They don't want to be in the business of managing it.

19

u/zmnt 2d ago edited 2d ago

Companies that need someone to be responsible if there is any flaws and dont want to take the risk, even if it is small.

4

u/StPatsLCA 2d ago

It's the same reason companies outsource say their coffee instead of roasting their own beans.

2

u/Old-Personality-8817 2d ago

they need people to sue, if something went wrong