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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Free and Open Source Software
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Businesses have a core mission. If you open a piece of software then you would need to have someone to support it internal to the company, it increases company liability, it increases distraction, and to justify all of those downsides it would have to have a clear upside.
The other problem is that companies are short term. Even if you could demonstrate all of the above, this could not be sustained for very long. Priorities would change and personnel would be reassigned or move on. Keep in mind head count costs are very high for companies. Moreover often head count is harder to get and maintain then the $ it represents to the company. By this I mean you might think head count is just $ on a project, but generally in terms of getting resources head count and $ are totally separate things.
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.