Ask HN: How will the OSS vs cloud battle end?
More and more cloud providers like AWS and GCP seem to a threat to open source projects.  AWS has managed Elasticsearch, Kafka, etc. GCP has managed Airflow, CockroachDB, etc.<p>How sustainable is it to have both (1) niche companies around a specific open source tool like a database and (2) cloud providers that maintain their own versions.  I worry the future looks bleak  for these niche companies, and subsequently for a lot of OSS.<p>Even now, what incentives do companies have to work with these niche companies vs just using AWS&#x2F;GCP&#x2F;Azure?  Is it better service? cheaper?  Is it easier to not be tied into a cloud provider?<p>Note: I&#x27;m focusing more on tooling like databases and such, not OSS projects like Linux or programming languages, which seem like a different ballgame.<p>[edit: previously mentioned the projects getting &quot;wiped out&quot;, which is not true.  I&#x27;m more concerned with unerstanding the actual competitive advantage these smaller companies have and how sustainable it is. ]