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Comment by keyle | Hacker News Reader

It's not that complicated. The closed-source software wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't from the open-source code they built upon.

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.

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>It's not that complicated. The closed-source software wouldn't be where they are today if it weren't from the open-source code they built upon.

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.

Did it 'win' then?

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'.

> 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'.

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?

>That's the most cynical take I have ever read about opensource software

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.

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