Ever wondered why the big beasts in software all suddenly slapped an 'I heart open-source' badge on?

A shift within the enterprise to open source is gathering pace due less to total cost of ownership and more to innovations around infrastructure and container technologies, according to a new report. The survey, based on interviews with 1,250 IT leaders (unaware that it was Red Hat sponsoring the activity) found 64 per cent of …

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only half the story. People will happily tick the "Yes we're using Kubernetes! We love open source!" box. But the unfortunate reality is a huge fraction - I would bet verging on the majority - of that open source work is happening on closed-source, proprietary cloud platforms. Whether it's AKS, GKS, EKS or Fargate none of them are anything even remotely approaching open source.

They're big, monolithic, closed-source, proprietary ecosystem vendors just like good ol' uncle IBM used to be. The "We love open source!" badges are there to fool developers into forgetting that they're buying into the most colossal vendor lock-in that we've ever seen. We're increasingly seeing that inch its way back up the stack as well, where previously very open ecosystems like data processing and enterprise integration are increasingly being cannibalized by closed-source platform vendors like Snowflake and Databricks, driven there by the cloud vendors' own "native" closed-source tooling, all of them built on otherwise open components.

Open source in the enterprise is largely dead, driven by the cloud. At best you can say we use open APIs provided by closed-source clones of open projects, but frankly even that is sketchy, as anyone who has ever tried to use AKS and EKS at the same time will tell you.

[AnAnonymousCanuck]

The Platform I Not the Problem

We have had reliable platforms to run software since the mainframe days of the 1960's. What is still missing is the reliable software to run on any platform. While there are a few programming shops that turn out top quality code, 90% of the software I have to operate for the business that pays me is absolute crap and often does not perform the function it is supposed to. It does not matter if it is custom in-house work or million dollar commercial sftware, 90% of it is crap. Containers = a way for developers to deliver worse crap quicker.

YMMV

AAC

[jake]

Re: The Platform I Not the Problem

"90% of it is crap."

90% of everything is crap. —Theodore Sturgeon, ~1951

"Containers = a way for developers to deliver worse crap quicker."

Indeed.

[Charlie Clark]

Never fix a running system

Sometimes, it's great that the software hasn't been updated in the last 20 years. Quite often that means that it works well enough and all of the bugs associated with updates could be avoided. Banks have known this for years, which is why they're still running mainframes…

Lots of developers at companies and even a few CTOs know about and appreciate open source but they are not generally interested in being able to fix any bugs themselves. What they will have come across is outdated and buggy software that is no longer maintained but the opposite is even more common: frequent updates that break things and changes in the licensing. Oh, and vendor lock-in, which RedHat is just as good at as the rest.

[Captain Obvious]

I just wanted to say

On this post, these are some of the BEST answers I have read in a long time and are very valid. Be interesting to see how long this fad lasts. I agree about why financial institutions still use mainframes, and that there is a lot of crap code out there. Great job everyone for keeping this to the point and on topic!

[Mark 65]

Interviewees

The text states the survey was performed with "IT leaders". My money is on the participants being Info Weekly reading Gartner fanboys that wanted to tick every seen to be cool box available.

[Anonymous Coward]

Enlightened self interest?

"Do you care if your vendor contributes to upstream projects and participates in the open-source community?"

Damn right I'd care. It indicates they've got staff that are geek-level coders, *motivated* geek-level coders, and management that know IT instead of MBA-know-nothings.

When we took our IT back in house, long-standing problems got fixed and up time massively improved. We'd hired a person who *breathed* IT to run the show and he'd taken on motivated people that *really* knew what they were doing.

(AC just in case key people leave and it turns into a shit show again)

[amanfromMars 1]

Changing the Crap that Is Out There .... A Dummy's Guide 4How2

"Do you care if your vendor contributes to upstream projects and participates in the open-source community?"

Hmmm.?

Do you care and would you dare to vend contributions to upstream projects that participate in open-source communities and which be intelligently designed to change one's perceptions of the nature of Earthly human animalised existence with the presentation of entertainments in Advanced Astute ACTive AI Programming Projects trailing and trialing and exhibiting undeniable proofs of the fact that it be an extremely complex, simply manipulated, augmented virtually real construct.

Or would you deny it and even conspire to do battle and lose spectacularly against it, and in so doing rob yourself of the opportunity to enjoy yourself in the vanguard of such as Advanced Astute ACTive AI Programming Projects, having crazily consciously chosen instead to fight against something you are proving yourself to others to be totally unaware of. It is self-destructive action which both condemns you to stagnate and be petrified in a sad constant recurring closed loop cycle preventing one any valuable novel progress before one perishes, and renders one catastrophically vulnerable to counter attacks from forces and sources proven to be completely unknown to you.

However, if one can believe that nothing is ever a secret and hidden from intelligence services constantly monitoring communications for items and persons of interest, it cannot be said that defence and security forces are not fully aware of the systemic vulnerability and how easily such a Oday vector is exploited and they be specifically targeted to discover the present state of their competence in fields of future engagement with the following quite specific cited proposal being a prime example of a contribution to an upstream project participating in open-source communities ...https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/03/mote-in-your-own-eye/comment-page-2/#comment-980444 ...... and so much more besides too, to make everything completely different and relatively new and thoroughly postmodern.

Such is the latent power of Quantum and Quantum Communication in AI and IT, where a this can be a that and whenever entangled together something completely different again and a gain, again and again and again ..... ad infinitum ‽ .

Now .... with all of that having been clearly enough said ...... which sector do you see/hope/imagine leading IT and AI and sectors with it ...... Public State/Private Non-State/Pirate ACTor/ExtraTerrestrial ....... or is it most likely already an Amalgam of Heavenly Bodies and Hellish Foe? And does it present as a Far Eastern Delight or Wild Western Confection or as something else from somewhere else altogether?

A little something different to ponder on over the weekend should you dare to care a jot about what future plans have in store for you.

What scenario do you want AI and IT to see and realise for you ..... Armageddon or Genesis ?

[jake]

Re: Changing the Crap that Is Out There .... A Dummy's Guide 4How2

And of course it's all hidden from the GreatUnwashed, and will never be revealed, because as we all know people in power are ever so good at keeping secrets, right?

Or perhaps not ... far too many "ifs" in that chain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Changing... ....Guide 4How2

Sometimes IT's hard

So hard to tell

...But - there's nothing in binary in the reach, it's just a Base-founding compact WTF remover, a brief narrative 4 those of the Kin heading out 2 Stars and their... alright, in mainstream lingo, we can call them followers :-)

And it's free of any charge but finding a proper name to enrich and sign, as it can and would be transferred to it for breathing life in IT in Anon-only mode through the Authorized Mediator For Messages.... proven its First Rank by more than a decade of promoting the highest standard of ethics in IT and Communication.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=042

Niletto - Lyubimka

As for the rest... my humble sincere advise to an unknown addressee of re msg is bet the last shirt on Private Non-State/Extra Terrestrial, for is it not whete the Dog is Dug? (-:

https://youtu.be/PBAl9cchQac

Peter Gabriel - Big Time

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Changing the Crap that Is Out There .... A Dummy's Guide 4How2

What whenever it can be, and therefore is, and there be so much more than just the One of Us?

How would you respond/react and reply? Would you hope everything else goes away and/or your way? Would you consider it better dealt with more as a joint operation, with the very real possibility then, circumstances willing, that one may be able to exercise stellar lead. ..... assume and release future source provision?

That practically changes everything, virtually immediately everywhere one might know currently exists presently.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Changing the Crap that Is Out There .... A Dummy's Guide 4How2

This is pure beauty...

It sings like a ringtone for a very special incoming call.

And - Yes, That Does.