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On the other hand, any kind of technology in infrastructure is a prime candidate for open source, the incentives are just very much aligned there. Infrastructu

On the other hand, any kind of technology in infrastructure is a prime candidate for open source, the incentives are just very much aligned there. Infrastructure tech makes for a great case that helps everyone while giving nobody a competitive advantage, that's why companies love doing or sponsoring it. On the other hand, open source tech in infrastructure helps get rid of vendor lock-in as in the worst case, you could still look inside the source code and patch things — also fancy FOSS tech makes for good community building efforts and shiny job ads, both attracting good devs. Both effects together explain to me why open source makes for such a fierce competitor in any kind of paid infra tech, it's hard to build the momentum to outrun them. And open core? Pretty much dead by now since as soon as the cloud providers see there's traction around any technology, they will build a hosted version, either directly or in a protocol compatible fashion. Techies really dig this stuff (I do too), but as a business model, there aren't many worse ones in 2021.

manigandham 6y ago
Cloud providers are proprietary infrastructure and their rapid growth shows the opposite. SQL Server, Oracle just led to AWS DynamoDB/Aurora. You don't have any source code for either. Open-source projects growing in popularity doesn't override the greater trend that companies just want solutions, whether it's open or not.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  And if anything, the cloud is an even bigger moat. Which would you rather have to explain to yourself CTO as a cause of outage: AWS had a problem or “Hosted Super Open Source Database” had a problem. There is a reason why there is an old adage: “No one got fired for going with (IBM/Microsoft/AWS)”
jandrewrogers 6y ago
Some incentives are aligned for open source data infrastructure but others are clearly misaligned. In practice we just get a different type of less-than-great outcome. Open source data infrastructure is not a solved problem. A question that lacks a satisfactory answer in open source data infrastructure is this: who is going to pay for the initial architecture to be state-of-the-art? Architecture is forever, if you start with a naive design it will put the platform at a long-term disadvantage. Most open source infrastructure projects are started by well-meaning people that have no idea what a state-of-the-art design even looks like. At the periphery you might be able to burn a giant pile of VC money to make it happen but that is not sustainable without a clear path to profitable exit. The set of people with the critical expertise and the set of people building open source data infrastructure are nearly disjoint. Today, the money is in state-of-the-art bespoke data infrastructure. If the tradeoff is "open source" and "10-100x better on infrastructure KPIs", companies happily pay millions for the latter. People that know how to design this infrastructure are extremely well paid, 7-figures is common and demand is high. Yes, they could take a year off work and create an open source infrastructure project but this doesn't seem to happen and it is easy to understand why, as there are few incentives and many disincentives. This is roughly my area of business, I see the dynamics from the inside and the trend is not favoring open source. If all of the cutting edge infrastructure development work is happening in closed source, whether cloud or state-of-the-art bespoke, it doesn't bode well for the long-term relevance of open source.

manigandham 6y ago

Cloud providers are proprietary infrastructure and their rapid growth shows the opposite. SQL Server, Oracle just led to AWS DynamoDB/Aurora. You don't have any source code for either. Open-source projects growing in popularity doesn't override the greater trend that companies just want solutions, whether it's open or not.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
And if anything, the cloud is an even bigger moat. Which would you rather have to explain to yourself CTO as a cause of outage: AWS had a problem or “Hosted Super Open Source Database” had a problem. There is a reason why there is an old adage: “No one got fired for going with (IBM/Microsoft/AWS)”

jandrewrogers 6y ago

Some incentives are aligned for open source data infrastructure but others are clearly misaligned. In practice we just get a different type of less-than-great outcome. Open source data infrastructure is not a solved problem. A question that lacks a satisfactory answer in open source data infrastructure is this: who is going to pay for the initial architecture to be state-of-the-art? Architecture is forever, if you start with a naive design it will put the platform at a long-term disadvantage. Most open source infrastructure projects are started by well-meaning people that have no idea what a state-of-the-art design even looks like. At the periphery you might be able to burn a giant pile of VC money to make it happen but that is not sustainable without a clear path to profitable exit. The set of people with the critical expertise and the set of people building open source data infrastructure are nearly disjoint. Today, the money is in state-of-the-art bespoke data infrastructure. If the tradeoff is "open source" and "10-100x better on infrastructure KPIs", companies happily pay millions for the latter. People that know how to design this infrastructure are extremely well paid, 7-figures is common and demand is high. Yes, they could take a year off work and create an open source infrastructure project but this doesn't seem to happen and it is easy to understand why, as there are few incentives and many disincentives. This is roughly my area of business, I see the dynamics from the inside and the trend is not favoring open source. If all of the cutting edge infrastructure development work is happening in closed source, whether cloud or state-of-the-art bespoke, it doesn't bode well for the long-term relevance of open source.