Open-source software is a bit of a modern miracle in my mind. The community-led mass development of the tools that power the internet revolution is something truly awe-inspiring, as is the talent and devotion of the developers who build and maintain open-source projects.

Where I can, I try and make use of non-proprietary software as much as possible. Admittedly, this isn't always possible, but there are plenty of great open-source alternatives to all your favorite software. While these might not always be the absolute best option, they do come with a host of other benefits that make using open-source tools feel great. So here, in no particular order, are some of the excellent reasons why open-source software is better than the commercial alternative.

5 Transparency

Got a problem? Check out the code

One of the huge benefits of open-source software, whether in a personal, professional, or enterprise environment, is its transparency. The source code is readily available to inspect, modify, and adapt as you see fit. This means that open-source software can not only be a clutch piece of the technical jigsaw for your homelab, company, or product, but also a great springboard for more customized solutions that suit your needs.

You do need to be careful that there aren't licensing restrictions for building open-source software into your products; some licenses like the GPL require derivative products made from open-source software to also be open source. This can in theory be enforced in court.

This extends even further though. Got a problem with your software? Check out the code. Want to understand how something works? Check out the code. Admittedly, this can be more difficult for some tools than others (you're probably not going to debug a crash in GIMP by reading some code), but being able to search for a specific error in the repository to understand exactly the conditions that can trigger it to happen is something I've made use of hundreds of times.

4 No vendor lock-in

No more expensive exit fees, per-seat pricing, or annoying cloud logins

Another huge benefit of the open-source community is that there's no enforceable vendor-lock in. Sure, you can end up stuck with a legacy tool or platform that's no longer being maintained or doesn't suit your needs. But the open-source nature of these applications means that it's easy for other developers to create tools to migrate or integrate your data from an older tool to a newer version, or for you as a developer to do this yourself using the freely available source code and documentation.

This is in stark contrast to many enterprise tools, which much prefer long subscription periods, per-seat pricing, monthly meetings with account executives, and much more. They often utilize strict contracts to ensure that moving away from their platform is as difficult as possible, and look to keep control of their data and prevent easy migration to competitors.

This is true in the consumer world as well - Adobe is an example of a company which has used a historical monopoly within the professional and prosumer image manipulation space to lock users into year-long contracts with expensive cancellation fees.

3 It's free - forever! (usually)

Make sure you check the license on your favorite open-source tools

The obvious benefit of open-source software is that once it's released, it's freely available forever. Software released under a permissive license is typically perpetually available under the license.

Some open-source software can be released freely, and then have its license changed, but earlier versions will still be available under the original license. This isn't always a bad thing - for example, MongoDB changed its license from a permissive AGPL license to the more restrictive SSPL in an attempt to stop cloud providers from offering Mongo as a service without contributing back to the community. Elasticsearch, Redis, and MySQL have done somewhat the same thing for similar reasons.

Rug-pulling the open-source community doesn't typically work for projects when done for the wrong reasons. Contributors are likely to leave, and may fork the project's last open-source version and continue development on an alternative. For these reasons, open-source projects are far, far less susceptible to the kind of freeware rug pull we've all experienced with commercial software (i.e. software is available freely or very cheaply, only to ramp up its pricing or change its model once you're onboarded).

2 Security

Open-source security has taken a beating, but it's still the best option

Open-source projects have recently garnered a lot of negative attention over some nation-state actors working to integrate backdoors in essential open-source software. Most notably, a backdoor inserted into XZ Utils was discovered by a Microsoft engineer, believed to have been inserted by a foreign, nation-state hacker. The internet got lucky with this one, and it does seem likely that more backdoors may exist in some open-source software. But the introduction of these backdoors is incredibly difficult, and again, likely only to come from nation-state-sized actors over a period of years or even decades.

For the vast majority of users (corporate or personal), large open-source repositories are generally safe. There may be some caveats or regulations to follow in highly-regulated industries like banking or infrastructure management, but that would be an outlier. For well maintained open-source projects, standards of code quality, secure code areas, and responsible disclosure are improving all the time, and the entire software industry has managed to effectively build on these open-source tools over the past 20+ years.

While this situation isn't perfect, it's worlds better than the security 'guarantees' offered by proprietary tools. Many of these tools go out of their way to obfuscate code, making it more difficult to penetration test. Companies may offer some guarantees in the form of third party audits or security scans, but these are far from foolproof.

1 A whole brain trust at your fingertips

The open-source community is always happy to help

If you've ever worked with expensive enterprise software, you'll have experienced the massive fees some of them charge for access to support. In fact, the business model for a lot of enterprise products is to sell the product at a loss, knowing that it is basically unmaintainable or forbidden by license to operate without a support contract.

In contrast, developers of open-source software put it out there to be used, and for the most part are eager to help people use it properly. Whether it's your favorite desktop software, a web server, monitoring tool, or an entire operating system, the experts are readily available. As long as you're willing to play by their rules (make sure to read the Repositories wiki carefully before submitting issues), you'll often be able to access expert help on your specific issue easily.

Now, this isn't to say that other bits of software don't have a community available, but with open-source software, the support you can get, whether from developers or the community more broadly, can be so much more targeted. In contrast, some guy on stack overflow might know how to fix your Adobe Premier which is crashing, but you may not be able to figure out why without reaching out to Adobe directly.

Open-source tools power our world

Open-source tooling powers our world, and is a great alternative to commercial options. While there is merit in commercial options, especially for those who build software for some business-specific or niche environments, there are often great open-source tools that can save you, your company, or your family some money in licensing and subscription fees.