Thread by @antirez

A serious note about this "open source software is broken because of cloud providers" thing. First and obvious: open source is not broken because the goal of OSS, historically, was not to make money, but to bring humanity forward.

Remember that the premise was *software is, and will be even more in the future, too important to be closed*. OSS wanted to fix early what could become a huge problem in the future about lack of democratization of software platforms.

Because of such premises, and because of how permissive OSS licenses are in average, they have a huge force, both positive and negative. The positive force is that a random person from Sicily can start a project that can compete on the market with huge companies.

This is one of the miracles of OSS. At the same time, since it is legally ok, there are subjects that will just take from open source without giving back to the more natural recipients of the economics it creates. Such setups are typically created by monopolies.

So the level of freedom that OSS provides creates both positive and negative effects. However in the latest two decades OSS reshaped the IT field, created possibilities that were impossible, including a startup landscape accessible for everybody.

So really nothing to fix. I think that "OSS should be fixed" is mostly the wrong sentence used by folks that would like to really say "A completely open source setup is not viable to create big software companies in the cloud era". That sounds more legit indeed.

And what is the solution? In the long run we can try with the "open core" model, so that part of a product may be prevented from being "stolen". But I doubt is the final stop, because the cloud itself exists because of OSS.

For cloud providers, discouraging the production of system OSS (cause business model) in the long run will be an obvious problem. In turn this means that cloud providers that will be more OSS friendly will get an advantage.

So what I hope is that: 1) Cloud providers will turn more diverse, with Amazon losing shares in favor of other companies, so that we go out of the monopoly. 2) Certain cloud providers to realize that OSS is vital, and to have a revenue share-back policy is a must.

In this way system software under an OSS license would *explode*: is the Apple Store effect. Now people know that if their software becomes famous and will be sold as-a-service by Google or Microsoft for instance, they'll make money.

Instead the situation right now is the contrary: OSS which is not just spontaneous (done for fun) or company-strategic (Kubernets), is going to disappear in favor of less-liberal-licenses that try to protect the creators.