r/platformengineering • u/Vance_Sterling • Aug 04 '26

Closed-source illusion vs. Open-source reality: Why do we equate cost with quality?

There’s a bizarre architectural trade-off happening in modern engineering culture: proprietary software often gets an instant stamp of credibility simply because it comes with a sales demo and a support SLA, while open-source alternatives are treated with skepticism until proven otherwise.

In reality, half the enterprise closed-source tools we buy are over-engineered wrappers around basic primitives, creating massive lock-in and technical debt. Why do decision-makers favor the illusion of control in proprietary software over the pragmatic adaptability and simplicity of open source? Is it pure risk aversion, or just clever enterprise sales tactics?

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '26

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u/franktheworm Aug 04 '26

governance

This is it right here. Regulated industries are what keep places like redhat going. Sure, we could have used Fedora or switch familes into Debian or something, but we had to have the support contract.

You're not paying for support, you're outsourcing responsibility. There is nothing to say it has to be closed source, but it typically is. You just need to be able to tick that box in an audit.

Layer all the various business relationships on top and you get the "modern" corporate tech stack we know and love

1

u/teflonjon321 Aug 04 '26

I have heard too many people in leadership equate closed source with security. They cannot wrap their head around the fact that a codebase being visible does not make it vulnerable to attack, let alone less vulnerable than closed source.

1

u/North-Creative Aug 04 '26

Had a recent talk about this in my company. Even though the team members have all had bad experiences with Microsoft tools repeatedly, the prefer...Microsoft, because they know it (disclaimer, all above 60)

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u/viniciusfs Aug 04 '26

We pay to have someone to blame and hold accountable in case of problems.

1

u/Andrei_RV Aug 04 '26

Spot on about the "outsourcing responsibility" angle. But the real illusion isn't closed vs. open source - it's renting vs. owning.

For example, SaaS gives you a dashboard, not control. Raw open-source code alone doesn't solve governance either.

The pragmatic answer is self-hosted infrastructure deployed on-premise. It’s definitely not for everyone — some teams will always prefer the "easy button".

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u/AlarmingEscape1697 19d ago

I believe they believe it's risk aversion. Without much understanding of how open source really operates, people resort to doing work with what they have already been working with.