Comment by ghostwriter
5 years ago
> Why should I use this software at all, let alone let you waste your time on patches? I'm gonna buy from Oracle.
With OSS you always have an option to keep your personal copy of the source tree, and you have an option to fork it and maintain it at your own expense. When Oracle closes and discontinues the software you rely upon, you are screwed big time.
Big companies often have code escrow agreements to cover that exact problem.
The advantage of them is pretty theoretical since you don't really want to become responsible for someone else's code drop, but that's not any different with open source.