Perhaps the thing just is that "programming open source stuff" is a shitty business model?
Build a database, not a database engine.
> Some open source is still written by people working for a large employer, who pay them to be dedicated to that product.
Take e.g. tensorflow by google. The software itself, is per se worthless, so they can release it as OSS as some kind of calling card or recruiting tool. The crown jewels they are guarding closely and are never letting any outsider access directly is their data.
> Take e.g. tensorflow by google. The software itself, is per se worthless, so they can release it as OSS as some kind of calling card or recruiting tool. The crown jewels they are guarding closely and are never letting any outsider access directly is their data.
No, I think it's a little more complicated than that. I don't think this is a good comparison.
Tensorflow is only "worthless per se" because it was completely open sourced. It's quite a sophisticated library and a substantial product could have been built using it if it was kept proprietary.
However, Google got to the space first and Google is fundamentally a software service company. The reason they open sourced Tensorflow is because they have data and recognized the data would be more valuable; hence, they decided to commoditize the complement. By open sourcing Tensorflow they made their data even more valuable (likewise for their services which can be used to build and manage a data pipeline).
Build a database, not a database engine.
> Some open source is still written by people working for a large employer, who pay them to be dedicated to that product.
Take e.g. tensorflow by google. The software itself, is per se worthless, so they can release it as OSS as some kind of calling card or recruiting tool. The crown jewels they are guarding closely and are never letting any outsider access directly is their data.