Ask HN: Is Open source a marketing trick?

2 pointsjerawaj7492 comments

oss founders try to attract customers by building open source alternatives of existing saas, but some of the oss is hard to self host due the nature of complexity needed to maintin and self host, so you end up using the cloud-based solution instead, i think of it as a marketing trick, maybe in some case makes sense, most oss is dedicated for developers, and developers are like babies want to try new things

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"It depends".

It seems the "mainstream" (if you want to call the larger demographics that) are beginning to understand source-available, open source, free open source, and free libre open source. Licenses are interesting, and it's worth digging into what kind of "open" source something appears to be rather than assuming.

Open Source is a system of perfect logic built on the foundation of a few flawed assumptions.

For example --- "source code" is favored over "product".

Developers operate under the flawed assumption that this somehow benefits themselves --- but the undeniable fact is that many (if not most) struggle to sustain their "open source" development over time. The most frequent and logical result over time is decline and eventual abandonment of an incomplete project.

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