As cloud continues to boom, it’s easy—but wrong—to assume that it may supplant open source. After all, much of the reason open source took off was that it enables developers to “get stuff done” without having to route requests for software licenses through Purchasing and Legal. Yet developers still had to figure out how to host and manage that software in their data center. With the advent of cloud, everything about running software becomes easier.
So much easier, in fact, that some people, such as FaunaDB Cofounder Evan Weaver, argue that open source may no longer be necessary. “People aren’t interested in ownership of the code. They’re happy with a cloud solution,” he once told me in an interview.
