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spot on. The lesson for would-be companies formed around open source is pretty stark: if your stuff is any good, then assume the clould vendors will offer it.

spot on. The lesson for would-be companies formed around open source is pretty stark: if your stuff is any good, then assume the clould vendors will offer it. If they do, it's going to be really hard for you to compete with a separate commercial offering. Not only has the cloud vendor already gone through the hoops of getting an enterprise agreement in place. They're also big, and recognised, and know how to deal with Procurement. And Risk. And Compliance. And Legal. Not saying I like that situation. It does seem unjust that the big guys can just cherry-pick good products and monetise them without giving anything back. It offends my sense of fairness. But that's commercial reality, at least in today's markets.

vinay_ys 6y ago
The whole reason I would choose an open-source tech against closed source is so that I can go to whoever I want for support and future enhancement, that I'm not dependent on this tiny company for my business continuity. Sometimes that tiny founding company may not be the best to offer the kind of support and enhancements I need. A real personal example I experienced: at one time, the founding team behind a project I happened to use at work actually told me they didn't want to do the enhancement I was asking for because my particular scale-out needs were too niche and none of their other paying customers need that and they didn't have the engineering bandwidth to build my feature (the opportunity cost for them was too high to abandon building features needed by their other customers). So I had to solve this scale-out problem by myself - which was painful (we had high opportunity cost too). In that situation, if my cloud vendor were to say they would solve that problem for me as they would be willing to invest whatever engineering bandwidth required to make it happen, then I would go with them. Now if that happens a few times, the cloud vendor's service offering will be much superior to the original project founding team's offering. Over time, the cloud vendor's offering will also be cheaper. Of course the trick here is to be watchful of being sucked into a lock-in by the cloud vendor. You will have to insist that all of the features they are doing for you are actually open-source and portable to another cloud. Many companies define such requirements as part of their procurement process and audit for it. As more companies start to push for such guardrail requirements to prevent cloud lock-in, the open-source commercial support model may still have a chance – but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily mean the project founding company will do well.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > In that situation, if my cloud vendor were to say they would solve that problem for me as they would be willing to invest whatever engineering bandwidth required to make it happen, then I would go with them. Aren't cloud vendors generally less willing then smaller SAAS companies to do custom engineering work for their customers?

vinay_ys 6y ago

The whole reason I would choose an open-source tech against closed source is so that I can go to whoever I want for support and future enhancement, that I'm not dependent on this tiny company for my business continuity. Sometimes that tiny founding company may not be the best to offer the kind of support and enhancements I need. A real personal example I experienced: at one time, the founding team behind a project I happened to use at work actually told me they didn't want to do the enhancement I was asking for because my particular scale-out needs were too niche and none of their other paying customers need that and they didn't have the engineering bandwidth to build my feature (the opportunity cost for them was too high to abandon building features needed by their other customers). So I had to solve this scale-out problem by myself - which was painful (we had high opportunity cost too). In that situation, if my cloud vendor were to say they would solve that problem for me as they would be willing to invest whatever engineering bandwidth required to make it happen, then I would go with them. Now if that happens a few times, the cloud vendor's service offering will be much superior to the original project founding team's offering. Over time, the cloud vendor's offering will also be cheaper. Of course the trick here is to be watchful of being sucked into a lock-in by the cloud vendor. You will have to insist that all of the features they are doing for you are actually open-source and portable to another cloud. Many companies define such requirements as part of their procurement process and audit for it. As more companies start to push for such guardrail requirements to prevent cloud lock-in, the open-source commercial support model may still have a chance – but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily mean the project founding company will do well.

nicoburns 6y ago
> In that situation, if my cloud vendor were to say they would solve that problem for me as they would be willing to invest whatever engineering bandwidth required to make it happen, then I would go with them. Aren't cloud vendors generally less willing then smaller SAAS companies to do custom engineering work for their customers?