If you are self hosting, you are still paying in your time to set up, host and manage it.
And with FOSS, you are still the product. You are providing bug testing, there are no guarantees, and the idea is you contribute back by investigating bugs you find and submit them to the project.
So many paid products are buggy, get EOL with some small notice, or pad their bottom line selling user data.
At least with FOSS you have the option of picking up maintenance yourself if the corp drops that product. Support for mission critical infrastructure will only last as long as your support contract with closed software.
I disagree that the users are the product with FOSS is what I was getting at. Major contributions being done by individuals is a special case, with little regard for business continuity. There are obvious examples of people that do it, but the real value regardless of the quality of the individual contributors is the ability to fork your own if the contributions stop aligning with your business plan.
That ability to bring the software in house is a guarantee.
If you are self hosting, you are still paying in your time to set up, host and manage it.
And with FOSS, you are still the product. You are providing bug testing, there are no guarantees, and the idea is you contribute back by investigating bugs you find and submit them to the project.
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So many paid products are buggy, get EOL with some small notice, or pad their bottom line selling user data.
At least with FOSS you have the option of picking up maintenance yourself if the corp drops that product. Support for mission critical infrastructure will only last as long as your support contract with closed software.
That’s a huge risk.
Oh yeh. I know a few companies stung by this!
I disagree that the users are the product with FOSS is what I was getting at. Major contributions being done by individuals is a special case, with little regard for business continuity. There are obvious examples of people that do it, but the real value regardless of the quality of the individual contributors is the ability to fork your own if the contributions stop aligning with your business plan.
That ability to bring the software in house is a guarantee.