Ask HN: How much does open source play a role when choosing a software? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How much does open source play a role when choosing a software?

3 pointsnirga6 comments

In recent years, I've seen a surge of open source alternatives to traditionally closed source solutions. From Posthog (replacing Mixpanel), Infisical (Doppler / Vault), and others.

This might be a question that was asked here before but - how much does it play a role when choosing a product to use? Will you prefer product A over identical product B just because A is OSS? If A is slightly worse, do you still prefer to work with A? Or is it completely the other way around?

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As always --- it depends.

Developer tools are supported well enough by open source.

Business software is less so.

How important is support and continuity and longevity? Source code is the only support Open Source really offers. If you get something more --- good for you but typically there is no obligation or commitment made in this regard. Even if you get one, it's longevity is suspect. It's really easy to walk away from a software product when it's not paying it's own way.

Most people looking to invest and build a business expect somewhat more than Open Source offers for "business critical" software. And many of these people are not in the software business and don't want to be.

imho. (!) FOSS every time ...

even if its far worse than a comparable proprietary solution ... as long as it fits my use-case :))

but don't get me wrong: there are a lot of use-cases out there which are best solved with proprietary products - and that's absolutely ok ;))

and especially as a company i should pay in one form or another for either solution!!

as a private person this is optional for me: but no FOSS-project will reject a donation or an order of some of its merchandise - if available ;)

just my 0.02€

That's interesting! tbh you're not the first engineer I heard saying that!

For me it's just knowing the option to self host exists.

Of course as long as there's a $X/mo cloud version available I'll almost always go with the hosted. But knowing that in case xyz startup goes bankrupt I could maintain the service myself is a great safety net.

For some teams it's just a philosophical decision, but many larger enterprises have mandatory requirements which makes OSS software much easier to adopt (this is in relation to infrastructure products of course).

You mean that enterprises would prefer on-prem, right? But if I'm an engineer working on a large enterprise, what's the difference between a SaaS providing an on-prem option, and an OSS? It's not like I can just git clone a repo and run it on my large enterprise cloud environment.

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