Why SaaS Might Be a Dangerous Business Risk You Can't Afford

Eric S. Raymond recently posted on his blog an article titled “SaaS (Software‑as‑a‑Service) Is a Dangerous and Foolish Practice.”

According to reports, Salesforce.com announced a ban on customers selling software dubbed “military‑style rifles.” The ban stems from the fact that the company offers SaaS, meaning the software runs on the vendor’s servers and the customer has no true recourse if the vendor decides to stop the service.

This is why “software as a service” is dangerous folly, even worse than old‑fashioned proprietary software at saddling you with a strategic business risk. You don’t own the software, the software owns you.

The article argues that if you want to retain control over your business, the software you depend on must be open‑source. Even when software is nominally open‑source, you cannot afford the cost of it being bundled with a service provider.

Furthermore, the author warns that political forces may label your product “unclean,” turning today’s “rifle” into tomorrow’s “hate‑tagged” software, and that vendor goals often diverge from yours, creating hidden risks.

Business leaders should learn to fear every piece of proprietary software and every “service.” Salesforce’s arrogant stance serves as a reminder that such “services” can become strategic liabilities.

About Eric S. Raymond

“The Cathedral and the Bazaar” is considered the bible of the open‑source movement, reshaping software development thinking. Raymond is a prominent advocate and spokesperson for open‑source and hacker culture, whose research explains the effectiveness of distributed open‑source development, as demonstrated by Linux and the Internet.