This is the huge issue with open source. The way to make money is to offer support or hosting. However, many businesses would prefer support and/or hosting from

This is the huge issue with open source. The way to make money is to offer support or hosting. However, many businesses would prefer support and/or hosting from a big enterprise. For example, a lot of CTO’s would prefer Amazon Elastic Search vs a separate agreement with Elastic if for no other reason than that there is a single bill and a single entity to call for support. You don’t want Elastic saying it’s an AWS issue and Amazon saying it’s an Elastic issue. In addition, the fact that API’s are not copyrighted makes this even more in favor of the big enterprises like Amazon, as they can release something with the same API. Honestly, the problem of how to sustain an open source business in this environment is an open question.