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  2. /Discussion
  3. /We trust strangers' open source more than our colleagues'
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  3. /We trust strangers' open source more than our colleagues'
Last activity 3 months agoPosted Sep 7, 2025 at 3:17 PM EDT

We Trust Strangers' Open Source More Than Our Colleagues'

MD87
21 points
6 comments

Mood

calm

Sentiment

mixed

Category

other

Key topics

Open Source Software
Trust in Software
Internal vs External Contributions
Debate intensity40/100

The article discusses why people tend to trust open-source software more than internal company projects, with comments debating the reasons behind this trust and the factors that influence it.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Light discussion

First comment

8h

Peak period

5

Day 1

Avg / period

3

Key moments

  1. 01Story posted

    Sep 7, 2025 at 3:17 PM EDT

    3 months ago

    Step 01
  2. 02First comment

    Sep 7, 2025 at 11:16 PM EDT

    8h after posting

    Step 02
  3. 03Peak activity

    5 comments in Day 1

    Hottest window of the conversation

    Step 03
  4. 04Latest activity

    Sep 9, 2025 at 11:25 AM EDT

    3 months ago

    Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (6 comments)
Showing 6 comments
bad_username
3 months ago
1 reply
The "entry barrier" and the level of commitment required to bring an OSS project to "findable in Google, has at least some github stars/whatever equivalent, is green in CI, and actually works when you try it" is higher that the authors of a typical internal library in a typical enterprise can afford. Which is why the recognition and trust is usually higher. All IMHO.
watwut
3 months ago
Sure, but if you search on Bing or Duckduck go, you will find them. This one is purely because google search quality went down so much in recent years, that it cant find anything niche - even if you add literal quote from what you are looking for into the search.
zem
3 months ago
can't relate to this at all - maybe it's different in programming languages teams? if anything we would be thrilled to find one of our colleagues had already written the library we needed and was available to ask questions of if we needed anything explained!
chris-bzst
3 months ago
What really rocks is the open-source spirit. It’s not about faceless strangers, but a community of people who freely contribute their time and expertise. In mature open-source projects, many reviewers and users scrutinize every change, making the codebase more robust and reliable.
klooney
3 months ago
> employees often maintain their projects because they love them, not because the company asked them to. That’s often a strong guarantee of long-term care.

Until they leave, or switch teams.

mberlove
3 months ago
I'm not sure I understand the claims being made. I'm curious if this is experiential / anecdotal or if widespread.

I think OSS is OSS always...being able to audit it makes it (reasonably) reliable, at least in the sense of security. I can look at the code, run checks, etc. That alone doesn't guarantee things can't crash and burn, but it's a great start compared to a closed-source solution, even if that solution stands on its promises, as reputation in software is an iffy prospect today.

View full discussion on Hacker News
ID: 45161294Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 7:40:50 PM

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