I don’t get why big companys are afraid of open source software.
I know that monetizing open source is hard but in exchange they would have 8 billion programmers ready, for free!
Even if they do like redhat , as controversial as it is right now, they would be better off than just closing the source.
I would be willing to pay to have the license to modify my own software even if I couldn’t redistribute it afterwards.
I was going to respond, but you said it so much better than I could have.
The tension between liability and control is real.
Yes there is the control end too. To develop software internally in a company you have to show there it gives you a proprietary advantage that other companies do not have and cannot buy. So that leads one down the confidentiality path. Every stupid thing then gets justified based on confidential and proprietary even if it is a stupid argument (not saying it is always a stupid argument). Imagine then saying let’s open the software. Might even be the correct thing to do but then you’d have to admit your proprietary arguments were BS.
Then even if you did that, you would have to do a deep code audit to remove anything that could potentially be an issue. Then you’d have to run that all through legal and up the flag pole to executive level. Then they would ask, why are we doing this. You had better have a good answer.