Heavy Networking 554: Mistaking Commercial Software For A Security Blanket

In November 2020, I wrote an article for our Human Infrastructure newsletter where I compared open source software to adopting a puppy. Puppies are cute and fun, but you have to train them to be a dog you can live with. I further compared commercial offerings to being more like a grown-up dog that’s already been trained for you. My point was that there’s a tradeoff between open source and commercial software. You pay in money for commercial software. But that doesn’t make open source software free. With OSS, you pay a DIY tax to make it do all the things you might need it to do. Our guest today is Daniel Teycheney. Daniel tweeted at me about this article, arguing that commercial software can often be a puppy, too. So we’re gonna talk about it. Is there really a tradeoff in OSS vs. commercial software? Has commercial software gotten so bad that you might as well go open source? Is open source not as time intensive as I’m making it out to be? Let the debate begin! Show Links: WriteMeme – Daniel Teycheney on GitHub Motherstarter – A network data transformation tool to accelerate the adoption of network automation by providing a command-line interface to convert input file sources to various network automation output formats. – GitHub DanielTeycheney.com Daniel Teycheney on LinkedIn @danielteycheney – Daniel Teycheney on Twitter Open Source Puppies Need Lots Of Attention – Packet Pushers newsletter