We’ll turn the question around for you as a client. Why choose closed source or closed licensed software?
Do you want the vendor to have control over your data? Do you want to make sure you don’t know what data the closed source software vendor is collecting about you? Do you want to have to get down on your knees when migrating your data and beg your vendor to give you access to your data for a small fee? Then choose closed source. Do you want to rely on “Chinese cuisine” that no one can see into? Because that’s what most closed source software vendors’ development departments look like. If you like the idea that Franta leaves, Lojza comes and writes the code in a completely different way and three times around, then closed source is the perfect choice for you.
Do you have little to do and do you want to write the operational and user documentation yourself as well as the REST API documentation if there is a REST API at all? Then here’s wonderful news: closed source will keep you busy after long sleepless nights.
And this goes on and on. But many times you will hear that open source software is more dangerous precisely because it is open source. The lesson of the forest experience is that what is open is also dangerous. But with software, the opposite is true. That’s why the safest system in the world is OpenBSD, which is strictly all open source. Precisely because of security. But more on that in the article on security through obscurity.
Now to the real reasons to switch to open source.
– Your data is absolutely and completely yours
– The application code is also yours, at least you can start running the application elsewhere than with your existing vendor
– In the case of large projects like WordPress, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Linux, and hundreds of others, there is a very large community of people who look at the code and look not just for holes, but to see if the software is collecting and sending data it shouldn’t. This may not be true for small to micro projects where there may not be such a community audit. But even here, you can easily cut the application off from sending data, because the application code is yours, it can be searched, and a more experienced administrator or programmer can quite quickly find the place that is possibly sending data
– You have the option of asking the company or an individual programmer who is familiar with the software to perform a cursory audit of the code, features, and architecture, and generally familiarize themselves with the ecosystem of the application that is critical to your company’s future operations. For example, it’s about those databases. And MySQL continues to grow in market share. According to https://db-engines.com/en/ranking – MySQL is almost on par with Oracle
– For large projects like PHP, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Python, Linux, WordPress, and WooCommerce, the documentation and support on forums like StackOverflow is truly gigantic, up-to-date, functional, and great compared to many closed source software
– Programmers can change, but as long as there is documentation and a code of conduct to follow, collaboration between programmers works without project managers. Which is an advantage.
– Security is mentioned above, but for those who don’t believe, https://www.secpoint.com/top-10-most-secure-operating-systems.html – check out the comments on the first place and Open in the title is in the sense of Open Source
It’s also sustainability, onboarding new employees who may have already been working with the software elsewhere due to its prevalence, the ability to change the vendor who takes care of the software and its extension, and most importantly, you are not bound by the malice of closed source vendors who, in many cases, write on the fifth page of the software license terms of use that they will share the data collected by the software you purchased in good faith with third parties.