Comment Tiny Pieces (Score 1) 133
Open-Source software has a number of irreconcilable differences from closed-source software that makes comparison tricky:
- Ownership
- Rejection of low-quality code
- No deadlines
A similarity:
There are more open-source libraries on GitHub in Javascript than any other language, and quite a bit of consumption of them. Most are built & maintained by one person. Lots of components are used to build an advanced website, but each is fairly replaceable.
My closed-source employer follows a similar process with each developer exclusively maintaining one or more tiny programs. Some of those were designed poorly to meet a schedule (by people who were let go). Now others (me) are creating replacement programs. Since each program does effectively very little, and it's well-documented for integration purposes, it's quite easy to replace entire programs outright that contain trouble. This gives us the same language freedom that open-source enjoys.
Further, it's a revolving door. Any program that's sufficiently devoid of "company secrets" is free to be open-sourced. This makes the company "dev-community focused" which helps hiring & retention.