For profit code is written on top of open-source, every single day.
If your metric for code success is the money it returns, then that is the only metric in which open-source has lost.
Humanity as a whole would be behind if it wasn't for open-source.
I'm not a FOSS/FSF/OSS freak, but credit is due where it's due. We're all building on the shoulders of unsung giants.
What? The dream of open source and its idea of winning, as it was discussed on peak FOSS movement era (late 90s, early 00s), was about widespread user adoption and overthrowing the Microsofts and Apple's of the world on the Desktop, with people using FOSS software, open protocols, and so on, and taking control of their computers.
It wasn't about what Google or Uber or Facebook might use for its backend. Or what FOSS libs some company like Apple or Adobe might use to create their proprietary software.
So, this dream has never happened. Instead businesses used FOSS for their closed off backend stuff, or for the behind-the-scences OS backend of their proprietary mobile phone platforms, whose crucial part is all the proprietary add-on services, and which almost everybody uses in its corporate official release, while people's computers and smartphones were never more locked-in.
The mass movement of FOSS idealism has also vanished (the kind that every kid in computer science cared about, the kind that made headlines, launched thousands of blogs and discussions on the subject) and so on. Now it's either a hobby or a corporate paying gig for most, seen in a pragmatic light.
There are well known huge OSS projects today that change licenses for future releases even after contributions (ex: text gen), or relase open source models/software that would be very commendable except they have their own modification to the licensing agreements to filter out competitors or just make it ambiguos enough that you don't want to touch it since you don't want to pay for lawyers yourself (ex: Llama, Falcon) to figure out what the non standard additions would mean to your project. Building a customer base off open souce to funnel towards your revenue or kneecap competitors is the direct opposite of what the FOSS advocates of old would advocate for (even if the right strategic move) an would have been such a philosophically bad thing to do that they'd be to embarrased to do it (there are ways to make money without doing that, see Redhat), there was an emotional aspect to the the devs who grew up in or adjacent to this movement 15+ years ago.
Open source for many companies now rhymes with the Open in OpenAI, where yes, it may have started that way with the best intentions, but things change. The idealists are gone, which is a bit sad, bu it's probably ok to not have the next RMS evoling in a computer lab today with a new rendition of the open source software song reconfigured for tik tok virality (j/k the GNU project was a key piece of what drove Linux forward of course).
I guess I was saying it depends on how you define it. For example the percentage of personal computers using an open OS is relatively low. But, eg, macOS depends on a lot of open source.
Every Google search is going through closed software, but also internally uses lots of open source, etc.
So it’s a mix and complicated.
Every protocols under the sun that is in use today has an open source implementation used by closed source software and OSes. Why? Because if they didn't, those protocols wouldn't be popular nor used. From file types handling, to images, to audio driver code, TCP/IP libraries, every cryptography implementation, every webpage you visit; from top to bottom is mostly made of open-source code.
Unless you're talking about rockets' real time OS, even the most closed platforms would be made of roughly 50% open-source code.
Come on, it's not that cut and dry.
I'm paying a monthly subscription for a dozen services, and there's exactly zero possibility that I could use an open source equivalent for all of them. Maybe a few... but, mostly not.
Is that winning? The 'most important part' of software being trapped behind a monthly subscription? Where I have no freedom to choose what runs on my phone?
I think the free software foundation might take issue with the parent statement you're responding to:
> Open-source (of general software) won and is winning every day.
The battle is not won.
If you re-frame the statement as 'open source is used by lots of people' then suuuuure, once you change what you're talking about, then by all means.
Absolutely. There's a lot of great open source software.
...but that's not 'open source winning', that's just 'people like free stuff they don't have to pay for or make any effort to get'.
>...but that's not 'open source winning', that's just 'people like free stuff they don't have to pay for or make any effort to get'.
That's the most cynical take I have ever read about opensource software. I think you're measuring the success of opensource software by only the amount of software that you have to buy. IMO, that's not fair. Does the software that you buy today exist without opensource software? In a hypothetical case where your commercial software was built without any opensource software, do you think the price of that software would be the same as it is today?
Cynical? If anything it's the opposite of cynical. It's an idealistic view, and closely matches the spirit we had back when the FOSS movement caught on - and the idea about the kind of FOSS future that never came to be.
>I think you're measuring the success of opensource software by only the amount of software that you have to buy. IMO, that's not fair
Fair or not, that was exactly the vision of FOSS, even starting from the first anecdote about the origins of FOSS by RMS. It wasn't "let's build something Apple or Google can use as a backend for their closed software" or even "let there be a lot of FOSS in the world".
It's success was supposed to be measured by the overtaking of proprietary software, not assisting it, nor helping it behind the scenes as a server backend OS or service. And it's adoption at a mass level for the average user, giving them freedom, not as some niche for geeks. "Linux on the desktop", for example, was part of that dream, and it wasn't about "Linux being finally easy/good enough for some people's desktops", but about eclipsing Microsoft.
That's not open-source code winning. It's closed-source (and SaaS and closed off web backends) winning, by taking advantage of open source.
It's like a bunch of nature lovers buying land in some idillyc place, and dreaming of a sustainable way of life there, and getting media coverage, and then some real estale moguls coming in, taking advantage of all the talk about that place in the media, to buy, raze off all the trees and greenery, and build some huge crappy suburb of identical houses and chain shops with huge success.
"GreedyRealEstate LTD wouldn't be where it is today without those nature lovers"
Sure. But it's the opposite of them winning.
Open source is not a popularity contest! Any slob could "win" massive adoption by giving away something of value for nothing.
The whole point of FOSS was to destroy the proprietary, closed-source software industry so that everyone could have access to all code. Copyleft and the GPL was intended to defeat copyright by snowballing into an ecosystem so unstoppable that proprietary software businesses would fold because they couldn't compete. FOSS has unequivocally failed at that.
There is a steady progress on the Godot / Blender front. Audio is lagging.
There is a steady progress on the KiCad front. In 10 years, it will probably get openEMS integration.
Almost nobody is licensing their programming languages anymore. Except for the silly low-code fad.
It did not win yet.
Years ago it was unthinkable for software company to release open source, whereas today it’s somewhat expected (and I know it’s not an easy feat with lawyers, domain specific knowledge etc.)