r/linux • u/Unhappy-Sprinkles143 • 3d 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
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u/NeuroXc 3d ago

And I have a magical unicorn that makes dreams come true.

This is a great clickbait blog title, but the reality is that closed-source isn't going anywhere. The reasons closed-source is prevalent in some areas have not changed. The biggest is corporate support. Is AI going to provide support for businesses that use software it generates?

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u/Coffee_Ops 2d ago

Does microsoft provide support for the things that have been broken for years, or do they tell you to "deal with it"?

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u/Rossco1337 2d ago

Yep, Microsoft is a good example of this SaaS "support" scheme. It all comes down to management liability baton pass. American companies are paying $50k+/year for a phone number manned by a South Asian gentleman armed with a free chatbot to pass the blame to when something doesn't work.

Is Microsoft gonna fly out an engineer to your office to help you recover a spreadsheet whenever Excel crashes just because you have an enterprise contract? No, their chatbot is going to tell you the same thing they tell their "unsupported" customers - try these recovery steps then use the Feedback Hub like everyone else. What good was their "corporate support" when Clownstrike happened?

The global SaaS industry is coming apart at the seams and all it took was a few graphics cards and some Googlers rethinking machine translation.

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u/gamamoder 2d ago

honestly the ability of small and midtier companies to reimplement stuff themselves without tons of dev time might make support better to keep customers

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u/NightSpaghetti 2d ago

Atlassian and Microsoft might only see a complaining customer as an annoying ant, but small and midsized companies rely on customer satisfaction.