I was surprised to hear the other day that “the cloud is killing open source”. I thought we settled that one ten years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth:
Open source and cloud computing work together well.
From a commercial open source business model perspective, open source is the on-ramp to a cloud service. You go to market by open sourcing some or all of your product, and you service on-premise and clouds with classic licensing, so a customer is willing to buy. At the same time you make sure that you are the only vendor who can operate your solution as a cloud service, at scale.
Granted, it may be tricky to convert your solution into a cloud service, but that’s where the action is and hence where you should be. Open source does not get in the way, rather it guides users towards your service.
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