I think this misses the point. The author of the operator delivers software as the operator + sidecar and a different can deliver a different software as the m

I think this misses the point. The author of the operator delivers software as the operator + sidecar and a different can deliver a different software as the main app being operated and sidecar'd. Imagine you only want to write a REST API without worrying about DB, for example. An operator manages you DB cluster and REST API server scaling