You can't treat open source software as a commodity but you can treat any version of open source software as a commodity. i.e. debian and ubuntu may not be int

You can't treat open source software as a commodity but you can treat any version of open source software as a commodity. i.e. debian and ubuntu may not be interchangable commodities but ubuntu 16.04 from a torrent vs given from a friend vs downloaded from a mirror are interchangeable. The services around opensource software such as troubleshooting or being able to spin up a server without having to supply anything but a password (and cash) are what makes a specific version differentiable, not who supplied the bits of that version. Since opensource is free and anyone can distribute it any 1 version is a commodity.