Once in a while we pick up arguments on why to use open source software or not. In most cases, open source is ment to protect customers - for instance, so they easily can switch from one supplied to another. But recently we heard an argument that closed source was choosen over open source ... to protect the customer ... from themselves. Huh?
Where did this go wrong?
Argumented was that open source code also made it possible for customers to change the code, despite having the experience to do so. The company making this argument supplied software for which they also provided support. But if the customers were allowed to change vital parts of the code, providing support would become very difficult.
So to make sure that customers were not doing anything stupid (and we all know customers are morons), the right to modify the source code at all was removed. We actually had a good laugh out of this.
Our standing point
Anyone knows that if you use software in another way than it was supposed to work, you can loose support. Everybody knows you can't call Microsoft if you are using an illegal Windows copy. Also, if you modify programming code (especially if those modificiations do not follow certain guidelines) you know that the original programmer doesn't know about your changes.
We ourselves lean much more towards the open source side. Actually, in customer projects with Joomla!TM and MagentoTM, we experienced too many times problems with closed-source extensions. Now we have gotten to the point where we just say no to any encrypted software (ionCube, Zend Optimizer). And if there's only one extension doing the job but it is encrypted, we just pretend it doesn't exist - it's not worth the risk.
With all the extensions we provide (free or commercially) we actually encourage modification. We try to document all APIs, comment every code-structure and make sure the code is overall easy to read. Ofcourse, core hacks are never a good option - that's why there are events, class overrides, plugins, template overrides, and all of those things that allow you to modify the original functionality.
But closed source? No, thank you. We'd like to protect ourselves.
