
Why is Open Source built with closed tools? - velmu
https://medium.com/@velmu/why-is-open-source-built-with-proprietary-tooling-17f0871d5f58?d=ty
======
corysama
The author answers the title question for himself.

> For all of the options there are open options available, but yet it seems
> that in the daily grind the value of “freedom” diminishes when proprietary
> products offer a better overall experience.

I love me some open tools. Open tools are getting a lot better over time. But,
people are not often enough finding them to be better to use than the closed
tools. The closed tools are not free-as-in-beer, but they are cheap enough to
justify their cost.

> Tweaking and tuning a free product compared to purchasing a license or
> subscription to a service is just more convenient — and potentially cheaper.

Theoretically, this might be _possible_. But practically, it's not panning out
for the tools mentioned in the article. Sublime text cost $70. A senior
engineer tweaking and tuning a free text editor for a single hour is more
expensive than that.

The real question is

> Is it just because closed products by nature create better user experiences,
> where as Open Source is best at low level things that are a commodity?

Open source does have some conflict with the nature of humans. It suffers
greatly from the Tragedy of the Commons. That's not a black&white, unavoidable
doom sentence. It's an obstacle that must be directly addressed if an open
project hopes to succeed.

------
devnonymous
Firstly I suspect the basic assertion of the post itself (where are the
numbers?.. Or is this just an opinion based on anecdotal experience)

Secondly, even if this is true, isn't it maybe because a lot of traditionally
proprietary software companies /developers are now contributing to open
source?

When it started, people writing FOSS were doing it for different reasons than
today.

If there was no other benefit beyond freedom for the creation in an open
manner (as a thought experiment let's say one could perfectly test software
for bugs and security issues, and that adding functionality didn't necessitate
access to source code), do you believe Foss would be as popular as it is
today?

The beautiful thing about sharing your code is there are more than one 'right'
reason to do it.

------
mohsinr
I don't agree with this article as my experience is different... I build for
WordPress (gpl themes and plugins) which is open source, using open source
tools:

Atom Editor, Git, Filezilla, Firefox, Ubuntu, Gimp, Ssh ...

