You can simply not use it, no?

I am not going to make any sweeping generalizations across all products. But at least in the case of Deno KV, there doesn't seem to be lock-in. So if you were running something self-hosted for KV persistence, it will continue to work unmodified.

> I would see with disgust a bunch of startups use "open source" as their marketing tactic.

Again, not sure which bunch of startups. But I am not seeing that with this product. Seems more like a survival strategy to add some cashflow behind the developers.

I am curious what you think Open Source should be (or should not be). I think it's fair that running a service in the cloud should cost something. And self-hosting it, I think it's fair that it requires a bit more effort than using the hosted service.

That's usually the case.

> at least enough so that I can self-host for my own product ... Vendor lock-in is a serious problem

I'm leery of vendor lock-in myself. Self-hosted will be the only way to run my product in the beginning, and the cloud service will follow when it's popular enough to make sense.

> May I ask what your product is? Just curious :-)

I haven't published the website yet (it will be at https://flowstate.dev), but it's a framework/runtime for building backend APIs using SQL and JavaScript. It lets you run SQL queries from the browser, among other things. Which sounds crazy, but it actually works well. Once I have a hosted cloud service it becomes a backend-as-a-service platform kind of like Parse or Firebase.

I'm not against open-sourcing it down the road, but it can't be an OSI license, and I'll wait until it's big enough that I'm less worried about competitors just lifting my source code. I know copyright laws protect against that, but that only matters if you have the resources to litigate.

I do want my users to be able to dig into the source if the documentation is lacking, and also to patch/modify it if they need to - so I need some kind of source-visible license down the road. I think I would also add a clause that if the company goes under or gets acquired and shutdown then all source code gets published under the Apache 2 license.

no, thanks

One can certainly provide an open source software which is not free software and illegal to redistribute. I can't see how that's detrimental to business. E.g. you can download the source code but you can share it to anyone.

Just because you make the software open source doesnt mean you cant sell it. At its rawest form open source just means that you are going to share the source code.

If a business is big enough that they have staff who can integrate your open source project would they have been a customer of yours anyway? And if they arent going to be a customer, why not have them as a tester and potential contributor? And if they are a serious company, they usually want a service contract for crucial pieces of software.

You could even have a license that allows using and modifying your software but limits redistribution (i.e. selling) although I wouldnt recommend it.

They have invested millions into creating cloud software. If they open source it, what is stopping other firms from taking that software and creating their own cloud offering?

Would you work for free? Would you open source all the work you have done?

May I ask for more details - in your particular case, how would having your software open source hurt your business?

Just pure curiosity, nothing else.

That means you're not really an open source guy. You're just using whatever is best on the market at the time.

Exactly. So they should stop pretending they're open source when this is really just source available as a sales decision. It's also bad for customers like you since you might be mislead into thinking they actually are open source, when in reality they do a lot to prevent any competing services which makes users much more locked-in than it might seem. If you want to switch, you'll either have to self-host if the issue is with their prices, or do 2 full years of development to implement your own version if they make a decision you don't like. It would probably be easier to switch to a competing service at that point, so you are just as locked into them as you are to anyone else.

It would be much better for you if they actually were open source because then you wouldn't be locked-in, and it would be at least a little better if they stopped lying about it.

I couldn't care less about the market. I am personally not in the slightest convinced by this product and I specifically asked other people to please tell me why they would want it. I just really dislike bullshit products (not projects) that lead nowhere and brain drain the open source world.

That's the main problem I suppose.

Yes

> "I was going to use this hosted, no-code spreadsheet/database platform, but then I realized it's closed source!" is not something anyone who ever would have paid for Airtable has ever said.

No, but “I would like, and pay for, something like that no-code database solution, but Airtable doesn’t meet our data compliance requirements and I can’t host it on ones I control to resolve that” its something I've heard.

The idea that you're using something for mission-critical things and can't even look at the source code seems terrifying and absolutely nuts to me.

I work in an industry that has a particularly nasty case of vendor lock-in. There are only a few vendors and they all do things the same way: no API and no innovation.

They are causing things to stagnate for the whole industry. I don't get why they don't realize that even just having an API (not even open source!) would lock someone in way tighter than any crappy gimmick feature.

I see open source as a regulator - a reference point that signals to closed vendors that they had better keep innovating or people will jump ship. When it's not there, it makes the vendors slow down since they know they can play it safe with the barriers for migration.

Why would you specifically want proprietary software?

If it wasn't open-source it won't be as popular as it is in the first place, Redis is also using ton of open source software or libraries for free.

Not defending AWS/GCP/Azure, I actually got my software used when i was young by a large company for free (not even a mention- Still using it i think, 5M+ Play Store Downloads), but that is the spirit of open source

> I'd rather use an AWS service with an open source core than a closed-source service.

I guess it’s just a problem with the people who work in software engineering. You won’t use anything closed source, but also don’t care if other engineer’s valuable open-source tools are hijacked by companies with billions in resources.

Basically, you want to have your cake and eat it too.

I just want them to stop using deceptive language.

> I just don’t understand the criticism of a company transparently acting in its best interest (in what I would consider to be a completely reasonable way).

They are lying in order to benefit from the good will and legitimacy that open source brings.

Three things. For one, I have no reason to take them at their word that they aren’t saving data to train on. Two is that OpenAI will shut down one day, and thus I would like any services I run to outlive them. Third and finally, I have hardware and it’d be a waste not to use it. As a bonus, I find it hypocritical a company that benefits so heavily from open source would hide away their models as closed source in fear of copycats.