I think productization of software use, for specific purposes, was inevitable... and therefore monopolies because of economies of scale. However, I also though

I think productization of software use, for specific purposes, was inevitable... and therefore monopolies because of economies of scale. However, I also thought this would happen to libraries/components, because the same dynamic is in play. But it's only happened to very large "libraries" that are in effect a platform, putting the programmer at a higher level of abstraction. Often called "engines': databases, game engines, etc. Yet... for the vast majority of library product categories, open source has won... it might be as simple as whether the programmer user has the expertise to make that engine themselves, or if there's a gap (as for non-programmer users). The coding imperative: If I can write it, I must write it. How can a business compete with that? Another factor is companies "commoditizing their complements", so e.g. we got java, to sell sun boxes. It became impossible for a non-free language to win.