Re:AWS, MongoDB, and the Economic Realities of Open Source
by greycol on Monday January 14, 2019 @05:02PM
(#18906960)
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.
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.