10 Reasons Not To Use Open Source

I was browsing the Serena website today, and came across a white paper: “Time to harden the SDLC. Open Source: does it still make sense? (10 reasons enterprises are changing their policies)”. You are required to supply personal information to download a copy, and they force this by only providing the link by email. However, intrigued, I requested one.

Apparently, enterprises are questioning their use of Open Source software (presumably in the specific area of software development) because:

  1. Terrorists
  2. Chinese hackers stealing things
  3. Chinese hackers changing things
  4. There is no support
  5. Ransomware
  6. Man-in-the-middle attacks
  7. Local copies of source code are easy to steal
  8. Edward Snowden
  9. 0-days
  10. Git is hard to use (I’ll give them this one)

The list ends with this wonderfully inconsistent paragraph:

All of this seems very alarmist: what is the true situation? The truth is no one really knows because no one is talking about it. There is a clear, present and obvious danger from using open source solutions in support of your technology stack. You have to decide if the risk is worth it.

No-one really knows, but there’s a clear, present and obvious danger? I see. The only clear, present and obvious danger demonstrated here is the one that git is posing to Serena’s business…

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