--- title: "Open Source Vs. Commercial Aggregators - The NewsGator Dillema" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/2/24/open-source-vs-commercial-aggregators-the-newsgator-dillema.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/2/24/open-source-vs-commercial-aggregators-the-newsgator-dillema.html" published: "2003-02-24T14:33:00" updated: "2003-02-24T14:33:00" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "In response to my post about NewsGator , Fleh comments: \" Isn't this where open source is going? i.e. how does one make a living if nobody is willing to pay for anything? \" That depends a lot on the benefits you get…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Open Source Vs. Commercial Aggregators - The NewsGator Dillema By Roy Osherove February 24, 2003 **Historical article** · Originally published February 24, 2003; technical details may be outdated. In response to [my post about NewsGator](http://dotnetweblogs.com/Rosherove/posts/2847.aspx), Fleh comments: "_Isn't this where open source is going?_ _i.e. how does one make a living if nobody is willing to pay for anything?_ " That depends a lot on the benefits you get from Open source Vs. commerical software. Just look at the Windows operating system Vs. Open source Distro's. Sure, some poeple rather have their linux's and other techie stuff, but the commercial windows software, being backed up by huge money, is much more motivated to keep up with the user needs and ease of use, there by giving added value by providing more products for their system and so on, which leads one to BUY their stuff for pure Added value, or for lack of supprt in the non commercial stuff. So, I kind of agree , and kind of don't. I agree from the pure business sense- man cannot live on code alone, (he needs some pepsi to go with it.. and pepsi costs money..) but on the other hand, i just don't see Open source disappearing in the near or far future. It's just so human nature, that for every open source product gone commercial, 3 new open source products come out. Is it "not nice" to just leap from one free product to another? perhaps, in a moral sense, but in a business sense it is perfectly legitimate. and we, as consumers, like it or not ,do business when we purchase or not purchase something. Should I buy a product just because i LIKE the guy who made it, maybe, if i were RELATED to him, and that too depends on the amount of money etc... but it all comes down to (again) what you get from it Vs. what you can get for free, and today, those are pretty much even. I would consider buying Newsgator, since it is the only Aggregator i know that integrates with outlook. again, pure cost-benefit issue. where is Open source going? It's going to stay here with us for a long time, until another way for people to express themselves opens up, and still it will stay, perhaps shrink, but never, ever go away. --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/