Yep! I actually far prefer closed source software, made by non-VC funded companies, where there business is to create good software that actually adds value for the license I'm paying for. Something like Sublime Text or JetBrains.
Sure <VC funded editor company> can have people spend years of their life working on something, but release it as open source because VCs are paying for it, and that leads to more mindshare, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Similar reasons to not use VSCode (commoditizing the complement by using billions of dollars from other products).
The "must be open source (I think they actually mean free as in $$) at all costs" crowd baffles me because the money to support the humans creating the software in the real world doesn't just magically appear.
Correct. This is what makes me feel guilty about releasing a closed-source product, or even one with a non-OSI license. It’s irrational, but I feel like I’ve benefited so massively from FOSS that I owe it to the community to contribute back.
EDIT: as another commenter wrote below, OSI is driven by massive cloud vendors, who have a vested interest in having their freedoms to take projects and monetize them. Perhaps a somewhat restrictive license isn’t a bad thing.
Open source as a byproduct of a company absolutely works - it's been proven by tons of tech companies.
But if you open source your revenue-generating parts, and only charge for support/managed version/enterprisey features you'll end up with quite weird incentives, particularly with infrastructure tools, in which the big cloud providers will happily compete with you, using the version you open sourced and providing and ecosystem to their customers that one simply cannot compete with
In the sense that most modern programming languages and compilers are open-source, sure, nothing outside the embedded world can truly be built without relying on open source.
There are still native shops that rely on very little open source, though at this point probably only in niches like gamedev or defence.
This is not true even in those spaces anymore. Games these days require libraries like SDL, or (increasingly) use engines like Godot.
Defense is a weird place, but open source is used quite a lot there, it's often required to do so and to record the open source consumed to produce a product. And often times, it must be commercial open source where you can get engineering support for the lifetime of the product's existence.
Sure <VC funded editor company> can have people spend years of their life working on something, but release it as open source because VCs are paying for it, and that leads to more mindshare, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Similar reasons to not use VSCode (commoditizing the complement by using billions of dollars from other products).
The "must be open source (I think they actually mean free as in $$) at all costs" crowd baffles me because the money to support the humans creating the software in the real world doesn't just magically appear.