

Seven reasons why closed source is better than open source - amboar
https://opensource.com/business/13/10/seven-reasons-closed-better-than-open-source

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simonh
Lazy and dismissive. For a joke post it would be ok, but it’s far too long,
involved and reasoned for just a joke.

The number one reason closed source works is investment. My first private
sector employer was an ISV developing an engineering tool for planning
cellular radio networks. They had a dozen developers working with engineers
from their radio planning consultancy business. Those radio engineers were
never going to work on an open source project for free. In a situation where
you need to include high value domain knowledge along with top level dev
skills, and ramp up development very rapidly in a highly competitive market,
that takes a lot of money, many millions of pounds. It’s the kind of
investment most open source projects can never dream of.

Open source works very well when you’re scratching your own itch and have
plenty of time to scratch it. The catch there is that you have to have the
itch, and know how to scratch it. In other words it has to be a subject area
you’re very familiar with, and you have to have the dev skills to implement it
yourself. That’s why it works so well for IT infrastructure projects like OS
kernels, editors, browsers, web servers, communications protocols, etc. As
soon as you need expert input from another knowledge domain, outside of
computing, either there's be a lucky coincidence that happens puts the dev
skills and domain knowledge together, or you’re looking at paying people to
help with the project instead of using their skills to earn money.

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amboar
I thought it was mildly amusing and it held my attention. I understand your
point of view though; whilst I work a lot with open source software I also
work for a closed source shop that uses closed source products. As you mention
some things will never be an itch that any one would want to scratch and
others are just way out of reach, however that shouldn't detract from the
benefit that open source software provides, especially to people that have
skill but not necessarily domain knowledge: At least they can learn from it,
not just build on top or be required to settle for workarounds. However, as
you mention, that requires the happy nexus of domain knowledge and computing
skill to have contributed some code in the first place.

In conclusion I thought the article made enough of a point to be worthwhile,
though maybe it's been done to death and could have been delivered in a less
snarky fashion

