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the concentration of computing in the hands of very few cloud providers has been only made possible due to almost all software being free/open such that it has
by icebraining 8y ago
the concentration of computing in the hands of very few cloud providers has been only made possible due to almost all software being free/open such that it has become a commodity
On what do you base this claim? The desktop OS market became concentrated in the hands of essentially one provider, and neither it nor most of the software that ran on it was free/open.
The cloud market is arguably more competitive, and becoming more so; the core of the revenue might be going to four or five big providers - which is already more than the above - but as a client you have much more to choose from.
- tannhaeuser 8y agoThat the desktop market became a monopoly without F/OSS doesn't mean cloud isn't becoming one based on F/OSS. Cloud thrives on abundance of F/OSS where the only money being made is for glue code and services, none of which arrives at the original developers or maintainers.
- icebraining 8y agoMy question is why couldn't Microsoft, Google and such have built their cloud services from proprietary code (their own and bought), much like Microsoft built their desktop OS and office and proceeded to dominate that market. I don't see the evidence behind the claim that it "has been only made possible due to almost all software being free/open". MS certainly had the money, and it didn't come from FOSS. If anything, I could see small players like DigitalOcean or OVH struggling to afford the fees for the code they needed, leading to an even greater reduction of competition.