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> Why is this so exceptional?

Because code isn't a good that spoils. When someone shuts their door to my favorite restaurant, the presumption is that they were losing money, and needed to close the doors. When my favorite SaaS service shuts down, it's the same deal.

This is different. They're just being selfish because they got some money, giving the middle finger to everyone. That same code is still sitting in a git repo somewhere, and that's frustrating as hell to anyone that trusted them. It would be no sweat off their backs to at least scale down support over a year to let people transition.

But let's not place the blame on them. It's probably not their choice to fuck over all of their users. I guarantee this is coming from Apple, and you should all remember that when you line up to buy this new fancy 1 port macbook: Fuck Apple, they don't give a shit about open source. They're embrace/extend/extinguish just as Microsoft. They just operate on Unix so it feels like they give us more.

It's okay though. Someone inside will realize they're sitting on a goldmine of information on how to make good software, they'll leave the hellish work environment that is Apple, write an open source version, and it will be superior.

>We could all hope all was open source but short of that, we use the tools that are available --with the understanding they could disappear tomorrow.

There is no "short of that". Demand open source for everything you do. It's not unreasonable. The modern computer ecosystem IS open source.

You are very much overstating the similarities from open source developers disappearing and a closed source software company leaving you up to dry. One can live on, and one has no hope.

Angry much?

You lost me with the "code isn't a good that spoils" line. It is a great phrase, but perhaps you could re-explain?

A restaurant requires continuous inputs: fresh food, labor, electricity.

Code is a purely digital good. What was in the repo a few days ago could be released at no ongoing cost to FoundationDB/Apple and it will stay exactly how it was, forever.

I disagree. Code gains technical debt over time, bugs are found, compatibility with other libraries and the OS fray, security vulnerabilities are exposed, and what were awesome features 6 months ago become commonplace or superseded by the new awesome.

Essentially, code starts to rot after a while.

Its utility diminishes as the difference between its original environment and the current technical environment increases. However, given a replica of its original intended environment (e.g. an OS image in a VM) the code will run just as well as it always did.

So code does spoil. And it doesn't.

> Because code isn't a good that spoils

It's true that the code that was previously released will forever remain open source but if all the repos get yanked off Github, that does suggest that code is probably not going to be maintained by its new owners. At least not in public.

Code does spoil. Exploits and other critical bugs are found. The only way it remains safe to use is by somebody forking the original project and maintaining. You could do that but most people aren't set up to suddenly take on a major project just to fulfil a dependency.

No argument that this is still a million times better than closed source.

The best thing to do in the short-term is to find a replacement. Even if you don't need it, have something that will work, is maintained and be ready to implement at the drop of a hat.

> We could all hope all was open source but short of that, we use the tools that are available --with the understanding they could disappear tomorrow.

And even then, open source projects get abandoned all the time or get shut down as well.

So in essence we as humans would probably be better off expecting things to disappear instead of the opposite maybe? Not sure I can do that, but still, seems like a more fitting strategy.

> And even then, open source projects get abandoned all the time or get shut down as well.

I can continue improving an open source project that gets abandoned.

In theory anyone can, but only large projects tend to get picked up.

But the magic of free software is, if your business depends on it and you can hire someone to work on it, you can keep using that source code for as long as it makes business sense to.

"I mean, it'd be nice if we could depend on things to be there forever"

When I read that, I immediately thought of craigslist, for some reason.

At least you usually have runway. If your favorite OSS project closes its doors, you probably have a year or three until bitrot finally closes the doors. Same goes for many closed-source softwares, and physical products.

With a closed-source service on somebody else's servers, they can turn it off tomorrow and it's just gone.

>Why is this so exceptional? What would we do if twitter folded tomorrow? things like this happen all the time.

obviously you're not an actuary but lay some odds that twitter folds tomorrow. (literally; overnight.)

I don't think they're saying anything in particular. The conclusions you take from it are yours.

I think they are trying to say something, especially when they add the 'apple' part. As if apple makes this especially egregious. I know, apple is the top dog to aim for in tech now, so they are a nice whipping boy.

Oooo, what happens when Oracle buys a company you depend on (Sun/ZFS). What happens when SAP buys a company you depend on. What happens when Cisco buys a company you depend on (any number of Hw companies). What happens when Amazon buys a company you depend on (robotics), what happens when a free software you depend on shuts down (TrueCrypt)

Wired is just capitalizing on an anti-apple wave. I'm not an apple fan, but, it's not as if they are much worse than others.

They could have just said "What happens when the products you depend on disappear?" But that's not sexy. It also does not fit their "narrative".