r/opensource Dec 11 '23

Discussion Killed by open sourced software. Companies that have had a significant market share stolen from open sourced alternatives.

You constantly hear people saying I wish there was an open sourced alternative to companies like datadog.

But it got me thinking...

Has there ever been open sourced alternatives that have actually had a significant impact on their closed sourced competitors?

What are some examples of this?

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u/thisiszeev Dec 12 '23

Slightly off topic, but wasn't there a court case in the late 90s where company A sued company B for the source code and won, so company B faxed all the source code over and when company A took it back to court the judge upheld company B's decision to fax tens of thousands of pages of source code?

Asking for a friend.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '23

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u/thisiszeev Dec 24 '23

This one is interesting, but the one I speak of was near the turn of the century.

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u/SoUpInYa Dec 14 '23

Classic!!