Hi devRant;

What’s your opinion on ‘open source’
Pros for and cons against its use. I’m curious

Reason for my question

I just met a programmer on the bus who is vehemently against open source starting he goes out of his way to not use anything ‘open source’

I myself use open source tools everyday in both my programming classes and outside projects. I vehemently believe the global collaboration potential of the open source concept is key to building bigger and better software and hardware in the future

How can one call himself a developer nowadays without using any thing open source!

It all boils down to what someone would see better of the two choices.

Convenience and Ease VS Trust & Security

The latter is open source and the former is closed source.

That said, such a comparison isn't absolute, exceptions do exist.

In the current age of leaks and data scandals, I'd prefer using tools/applications that an end-user can have complete and absolute trust over.

Opensource is not "just software" without open source would just not possible. If bell hadnt open sourced unix, no os of an equal capacity would exist. complete closed source is haunting our world, because it was made to be complicate and errorprone.
opensource is like a standard, if people like it, it will be used, if not, it dies out. Opensource is an extrem big part of our world. Closed source loses its foot in the door, because its inflexible. It also helps with the marketing of the company. Good code helps developers with deciding where they want to work.

This question always brings out boatloads if delusion and nonsense. The software you use is a tool. Pretend it's a hammer. Will a free one do the job? Use it. It might even be the best hammer out there. Maybe the free hammer looks a little weak, so you buy a nice sturdy looking one from home Depot. Now, what happens if they both break? You can return one hammer to Home Depot and get it repaired or replaced. You might even get a new and improved model for your trouble. When the free hammer breaks, you're shit out of luck. You might be able to fix it yourself. Maybe your neighbor can fix it. But it probably won't get fixed right away. You might even end up at Home Depot buying a hammer anyway. And remember, at no time in your hammer search were you ever tempted to ask about "the moral standards of the global community of altruistic hammer makers".

Did bus boy ever explain what his rationale against open source was -- assuming he had a rationale?

Mr. Bus is a close-minded idiot.

Tell him to not use any linux architectures

I'd love to know how he gets any work at all done in this day and age without using anything that's open source.

What's the stack this dev primarily uses?

@monkeyboy I agree but I also got the opposite of your conclusions.

If the client wants a new feature by tomorrow and your expensive hammer breaks, you have to return it back and wait it to get fixed. If you need a wrench but you paid for a hammer, and there are no wrenchs of your desired size, you'll need to transform a hammer in a wrench.

But you can do it only if you used the free hammer.

And you may ask "what if I don't know how to transform a hammer in a wrench?". Well, using a tool without knowing what it does, it's never a good idea