Neo OSS

When I was doing research, Columbia mentor was like everything is going to open source now. I didn’t really understand why. I didn’t really get why people are not building a moat around their software. But now I sorta get it. People get engaged, creates a community, and that is longer-lasting and more impactful than being Oracle and releasing software from time to time. You always stay relevant. And in a way, its more democratized, the community sort of chooses where to go and what is needed. And when something better shows up and people leave, well that’s just survival of the fittest and natural and we should just let that happen. Don’t waste resources on projects that people don’t care about anymore.

However, there is a problem that I see which is all these OSS and open source projects somehow always have a “group” behind it. And often times that group turns into some weird entity that provides enterprise service as well. Is that wrong? No, they should get rewarded for their efforts and enterprise software often needs tailoring. But I feel like it’s becoming a con at some point. Yes, we’re open source, we love the community, but tada here is our bank account please contact for business. IDK, I feel about it yet. Maybe it’s inevitable, and is still a better way than completely closed-source.

I think people realized that not everyone will and can read through the source code and understand what’s happening so no harm there.

This is what really triggered this thought: