I think it's fueled by a naive idea that paying for closed source software is inherently bad. Actually, it's not necessarily a naive idea, as this specific OP may have weighed the pros and cons and have decided that it's not worth the risk, but I do think there are very wrongheaded cargo cult ideas around this.
We tend to gloss over the fact that when dealing with OSS:
- Project maintainers can leave/change/stop supporting the software and the idea that "since it's OSS, I can just pick up the slack" sounds better in ones head, then it does in practice.
- Even large projects (think Angular) can move in odd and unexpected directions, which in reality simulate a company "going out of business" for all intents and purposes.
- OSS 'support' is great, until it's not. Meaning, if there are plenty of SO questions and answers, it's great, until your specific issue isn't addressed, at which point you're either looking to a third party to pay for support, or you're rolling your sleeves up and digging into a codebase you have no experience with outside of an external API level understanding.
The dirty secret of large successful companies is that they actually pay for software, and the support of that software because they understand that time = money and vice versa.
After using datomic in production, I'd welcome my competitor to use Postgres. I'd even push them to. It's a monstrous competitive advantage for me.
We tend to gloss over the fact that when dealing with OSS:
- Project maintainers can leave/change/stop supporting the software and the idea that "since it's OSS, I can just pick up the slack" sounds better in ones head, then it does in practice.
- Even large projects (think Angular) can move in odd and unexpected directions, which in reality simulate a company "going out of business" for all intents and purposes.
- OSS 'support' is great, until it's not. Meaning, if there are plenty of SO questions and answers, it's great, until your specific issue isn't addressed, at which point you're either looking to a third party to pay for support, or you're rolling your sleeves up and digging into a codebase you have no experience with outside of an external API level understanding.
The dirty secret of large successful companies is that they actually pay for software, and the support of that software because they understand that time = money and vice versa.
After using datomic in production, I'd welcome my competitor to use Postgres. I'd even push them to. It's a monstrous competitive advantage for me.