Built vs Bought

As I transition to a new job, and can see how a bigger organisation handles their infrastructure, workflow, and software, I have an oppurtunity to reflect on a question which has followed me through my previous positions, and is really a life-defining philosophical question. The debate of building something entirely oneself, versus buying parts or an entire solution, is not just relevant to IT admins, and something that is increasing relevant to everything as more and more things are being comoditised.

People globally are becoming more reliant on the systems that are built by other people to support them. As we see people effected so drastically by the damaged supply chains due to the Coronavirus, I believe it is time for people as societies to rationalize how dependent we should be. Of course, corporations and organisations large enough, and who make their livelyhood off people giving them control, will be resisting this change, the power is still owned by the people, if they are commited and united enough to take it up together. This is why there is so much dis-information, marketing, and social programming in the world; organisations are automating the world, and any free-will changes can prevent planned profits and agendas from coming to frutition. Now that we can identify grandiose systemic causes, what are we to do about our smaller scale question of built versus bought?

Buying takes the responsibility and resource-sink away from the purchaser, and gives it to the seller; that is not up to debate. Entities cannot achieve their goals if they need to reinvent the wheel whenever they need a new automobile, its impractical. But they don’t have to buy an off the shelf wheel either, they can use the platform of wheels passed down to us all. This common good, public domain, and shared resources ideal is what forms the basis of free software, and is close to what some free as in freedom code hopes to acchomplish. These frameworks are not bought, but they are not entirely built. This happy middle ground of stable code (of which some is, and some isn’t) is the bedrock that makes up the world’s networked infrastructure. No company could have done that itself, but the more they can try, they will. So as we see time an time again, there is happy medium of middle ground between the two extremes, where most could achieve all they need, and help their neighbor do the same.

This is what the future could, and may yet, look like. I have not been in the game long enough to spot all the trends, but there are pointers for all to see of stable, open source, platforms being the near future. The debate of free software versus open source is of course for another day, but know that we aren’t in the worst place :)