danielblazevski

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.

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.

Even now, what incentives do companies have to work with these niche companies vs just using AWS/GCP/Azure? Is it better service? cheaper? Is it easier to not be tied into a cloud provider?

Note: I'm focusing more on tooling like databases and such, not OSS projects like Linux or programming languages, which seem like a different ballgame.

[edit: previously mentioned the projects getting "wiped out", which is not true. I'm more concerned with unerstanding the actual competitive advantage these smaller companies have and how sustainable it is. ]

To me it seems that every alleged application of blockchain technology can be done by having a trusted organization maintaining a reliable database.

Am I missing something?

What are the benefits of blockchain technology that currently aren't solved by having some central trustworthy source maintain a database?

To me it seems that a "blockchain" claim to fame is being decentralized. But who maintains the tech to make the system reliable? Seems like a centralized organization would essentially be needed to maintain a database used by others.