So let's first understand what's going on? Yesterday the creator of cal.com platform announced that they're going to closed source. Till now the whole codebase of cal.com was open source and anyone could contribute to it, anyone can see the codebase, analyze it, make some changes and self-host it. But now the company has decided to keep the production codebase closed and they've created another site cal.diy which contains open source codebase.
Why did they do that ?
The reason is not just simply AI. This decision is made according to business aspect. Even though AI isn't included directly in the reason, it is indirectly related to it. Hackers! Since the codebase was open source company was already facing issues with hackers. But now b'coz of AI, hackers can easily create a bot which can automatically find the vulnerabilities in the codebase and exploit them. Which can eventually lead to data breaches and loss of user trust. So the company has decided to keep the production codebase closed to protect their users and their business.
The creator Bailey Pumfleet has feeling sad to make this decision but he just can't let attackers to harm his users and their data. He wants to protects them by all cost. He trully wanted to keep cal.com open source but the only option left for them right now is to make it closed source. Off course, it can't solve the problem completely but it can atleast reduce the risk of attacks and data breaches.
Many developers are disappointed b'coz they never thought that cal.com will go closed source someday. Many have used it as a learning resource to understand how a real world build but we've to understand that the world is changing and we need to adapt to it. We can't just keep everything open source and expect it to be safe. We need to find a balance between open source and closed source to protect our users and our business.
So what now ?
The cal.com codebase is still open source but the production codebase is closed. So if you want to contribute to cal.com or want to learn from it, you can still do that by looking at the codebase of cal.diy. They've changed some parts of the production codebase like authentication, billing, handling of the credentials of calendars etc. This updated things will not available in open souce codebase.
Conlusion
This is a sad news for the open source community but we need to understand that it's not the end of open source. Open source will always be there and it will always be a great resource for learning and contributing. We just need to find a balance between open source and closed source to protect our users and our business. We need to adapt to the changing world and we need to find new ways to keep our users safe while still providing them with the benefits of open source.
You can read the full announcement of Bailey Pumfleet on twitter.