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Comment by GoToRO | Hacker News Reader

Why not use this to fund open source? Have a checkbox to disable ads if you really want to give people freedom. I just can't see how open source can compete without enough funds.

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After 12 years working at Red Hat, I can assure you that Open Source not only competes, it is actually winning everywhere. And business models exist that are fair to all sides, allowing us to employ a lot of developers and participating in upstream.

Ads are not a solution IMHO, they are a big part of the problem.

> I can assure you that Open Source not only competes, it is actually winning everywhere. And business models exist that are fair to all sides, allowing us to employ a lot of developers and participating in upstream.

It would be great to see not only an assertion but an article that spells this out in some detail.

The Black Duck Open Source Survey 2016 is a good starting point IMHO, especially the first third.

https://www.slideshare.net/blackducksoftware/2016-future-of-...

Why would you need an article? Most large tech companies share their infrastructure on their tech blogs, and most often it's completely composed of open-source software (e.g. Kafka, Nginx, Storm, Postgres, Redis, other Apache products, etc.).

This discussion goes well beyond infrastructure.

> winning everywhere

I like open source as much as the next guy, but I'm pretty sure you have a peculiar definition of "everywhere".

(Or, perhaps "winning".)

The internet primarily runs on open source software. Your browser is primarily open source software, unless it's IE/Edge, but let's be serious here. Your phone - primarily open source, unless it's WP/BB, but again, let's be serious.

The desktop/laptop you're using right now probably isn't open source, but much of the important software running on it is, and most of the computers it talks to are, and most of the other computers, obvious or hidden, in your life are too.

Not to mention that pretty much all of the services you use are mostly a glue layer over open source projects/libraries/services, including its OS and all those services.

"Your phone - primarily open source"

Is the iPhone actually primarily open source? There's certainly parts of iOS that are but I had no idea it was the majority of it.

The vast majority of phone is Android, though. One of the reasons I'd always recommend Android to friends and family is the open source component, even if said friends and family have no direct benefit from it (only indirect, through open source stuff being used and us being able to look at it and improve it).

He meant android I guess.

Mac OS is made of large swathes of open source code... but before publishing the source of the kernel, Apple runs a script to strip out anything iOS-specific.

That's just one example but I think it portrays Apple's iOS-OSS relationship pretty well.

Really? From what I gather from projects like RethinkDB or this:

https://www.influxdata.com/the-open-source-database-business...

open source is a forever struggling business model.

> it is actually winning everywhere

nice try, trump

I think it's fair to say that open source has made inroads everywhere. If I were to tell my 30-year younger self what the future looks like, I don't think I would have believed myself. Having said that, there are lots of places where open source is having a hard time. In telecom and medical software for instance. I mean, I can set up a SIP server and inspect the Android source code, but there is a long way to go (like actually being able to build and deploy on a piece of commodity hardware in the case of Android). For medical software, just try to get access to source code for any medical device. You get the thing installed in your body and you can't even look at it.

Like I said, in every place open source has won important battles. The future looks good, but let's not understate the challenges either.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/21/red-hat-ceo-8-figure-deals-in...

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