The Dead End
This article consists of a few highly selective observations, glued together by make-believe.<p>Open source was the industry <i>default</i>? On what planet?<p>&quot;Team, make everything open source by default, unless I tell you otherwise&quot; --- said no CEO or other boss, ever.<p>We <i>have</i> a lot of open source; a lot of it is very advanced, and forms critical infrastructure, sure. But proprietary software has not gone away even slightly.<p>&gt; <i>Open source licenses, after all, offer the same equitable terms to all players, and limit neither competition nor usage.</i><p>Really? The sole proprietor of some GPLed program is on the same level as any other player?<p>And how can you write a lengthy article on these topics without even mentioning what is probably the biggest issue to free software: it is not some &quot;bait and switch&quot; where open source projects get relicensed. It&#x27;s that much software people use is now a service. The user has no control whatsoever; they are not even getting to install a binary executable on their own machine. The licensing is irrelevant to the end user.<p>This entire article is about the bickering among developers: who gets what kinds of rights to which infrastructural pieces, with it being understood that everyone&#x27;s shared goal is cobbing something together with those pieces in order to hold hostage the hapless users of some god forsaken SaaS application.<p>OK, so sure; if we put developer blinders on, open source is the default. My compiler is open source; my editor is open source; the OS is open source; the browser is open source; the database is open source. Hey open source is the default!<p>Meanwhile, Average Joe: social network isn&#x27;t open source; webmail isn&#x27;t open source; crap running in Joe&#x27;s automobile isn&#x27;t open source; Joe&#x27;s phone isn&#x27;t open source; Joe&#x27;s TV streaming box isn&#x27;t open source. Neither are the half dozen apps Joe relies on for this and that, or services like online banking. Almost not a single everyday use case or solution for the average user is open source. How can you talk about a default with a straight face. And this is just the consumer-facing stuff I&#x27;m talking about.  For instance, let&#x27;s switch to business. What enterprise runs their finances, operations and logistics on open source?