I've since long forgotten where I first red the sharecropping metaphor for software development.
But I recall successfully convincing my manager that it was worth it to build on top of open source instead of proprietary platforms.
When you describe things in terms of business risk, managers understand.
What's supposed to stop open source OSes from including a copy of your commercial function in their next version? Isn't recreating commercial products for free of the point of open source?
By your definition anyone who doesn't own the OS is a sharecropper.
The real danger is in writing software that is easily recreated.
In the end, all software is made obsolete by better (or better marketed/distributed) software. The only difference with the OS is that it's a little faster.
the phrase everything old is new again makes me wonder how many times great inventions had to be invented before they gained traction. Everyone knows that iPod wasn't the first portable HDD music player, but will people know that in 200 years? What inventions from 200 years ago do we attribute to the wrong people? (tesla/edison is one obvious example, but I'm sure there are some that no one knows about.)
I've since long forgotten where I first red the sharecropping metaphor for software development. But I recall successfully convincing my manager that it was worth it to build on top of open source instead of proprietary platforms.
When you describe things in terms of business risk, managers understand.