<story><title>Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy</title><url>https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/how-we-migrated-dropbox-from-nginx-to-envoy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>e40</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Also note that we’ll cover the open source version of the Nginx, not its commercial version with additional features.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It always kills me when very successful companies don&amp;#x27;t buy software from other companies.&lt;p&gt;I remember being at a lunch with a prospective client that really loved our technology.  About 1&amp;#x2F;2 way through, he said he really would love to purchase our software, but the CEO doesn&amp;#x27;t allow them to use anything but OSS.  What they make?  Non-OSS software.&lt;p&gt;Just blows my mind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JoshTriplett</author><text>In a business context, I&amp;#x27;d definitely consider paid support for an Open Source product. But I&amp;#x27;m not interested in a proprietary version that I can&amp;#x27;t modify or get third-party support for or otherwise work with in a pinch; I&amp;#x27;m &lt;i&gt;certainly&lt;/i&gt; not going to make a business dependent on it. Push the proprietary version hard enough and I&amp;#x27;ll reconsider whether I even want to use the Open Source version, or if it might be on more tenuous ground that might get undermined in the future (pushing back on improvements to the Open Source version to maintain differentiation, or worse, deciding to switch to a non-FOSS license in the future).</text></comment>
<story><title>Migrating Dropbox from Nginx to Envoy</title><url>https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/how-we-migrated-dropbox-from-nginx-to-envoy</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>e40</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Also note that we’ll cover the open source version of the Nginx, not its commercial version with additional features.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It always kills me when very successful companies don&amp;#x27;t buy software from other companies.&lt;p&gt;I remember being at a lunch with a prospective client that really loved our technology.  About 1&amp;#x2F;2 way through, he said he really would love to purchase our software, but the CEO doesn&amp;#x27;t allow them to use anything but OSS.  What they make?  Non-OSS software.&lt;p&gt;Just blows my mind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nrmitchi</author><text>I think a part of this is that engineers in particular have a preference to use software which can be treated as a transferable skill if&amp;#x2F;when they move on. They would rather use the OSS version of Nginx, of Envoy, because they know they will have access to it in the future. I think there is some aversion to becoming familiar with the features, functionality, and characteristics of a piece of software that your current employer is paying a non-trivial amount for, when you know that chances are your next employer will refuse. This may not be in the best interest of the current company, but it&amp;#x27;s a bias that I think impacts a lot of engineers.</text></comment>