> the very philosophical foundation of the open source idea is that infrastructure software should be free, so greater ideas can more easily take flight. This

> the very philosophical foundation of the open source idea is that infrastructure software should be free, so greater ideas can more easily take flight. This is true from a "free as in freedom" perspective, but isn't limited to infrastructure software. The idea is that all software should be free (as in freedom) so that greater ideas can more easily take flight. In reality, once people started understanding some of the open source (as opposed to free software) ideas, infrastructure lost it's value. We all need infrastructure. For example, as great as Redis is, there are many companies who could build it. And if Redis goes proprietary, somebody will take over (and will probably hire antirez away from RedisLabs). The costs are not actually that large and the benefits are too big. Think about Facebook for a minute. It was not that long ago that no reasonable developer would consider working there. React comes out. Suddenly, everybody and their dog wants to work for Facebook. Let me reiterate: Facebook -- one of the most hated companies in all of high tech. Sure you could sell React, but for what? A handful of cash at best. Actually, if you put a proprietary license on that thing, nobody would touch it with a 10 foot pole. But you bet they'd rewrite it. And share it. Even the smallish company I do work for is keen to release open source software -- we just haven't built anything compelling yet. If we had the need for some cool infrastructure that nobody has built yet, you bet we'd build it. And share it. So while we all need infrastructure, we can all build infrastructure. All of us. And we will (good grief -- look at all those insane frameworks :-P). It's cheaper than chips. That's why you can't sell it.