CMDS 004: The Unfortunate Reality of Open Source
by Ry Walker CEO @Tembo đ More is not the answer..
CMDS 004: The Unfortunate Reality of Open Source
More is not the answer
Ry Walker
October 27, 2023
Last week, we disappointed everyone who thought sticking to one cloud provider would make their lives easier and less expensive. This week, weâre back to disappoint you again. Hereâs why the other option, operating across clouds, is just as frustratingâŠwith one major exception.
But before we get there, letâs talk about some of the benefits of operating across multiple clouds. For one thing, having multiple cloud providers courting you means you gain the power to negotiate your agreements. You can shop multiple offers, and if Azure raises their prices, you can threaten to leave them for AWS. Plus, having access to multiple cloud environments gives your teams flexibility and permission to use the tools they like. It stops the âshadow ITâ rebellion before it starts.
Freedom and flexibility are nothing to sneeze at, but I did say there was more disappointment coming, and here it is: operating across multiple clouds is a strong invitation to bloat. Once a cloud providerâs sales team gets 3% of your spend, theyâll try to get you to increase that share to 30% (recall the âland and expandâ approach). Theyâre fishermen using barbed hooks to catch their dinner - not to release you back into the sea, where you can explore other products outside their proprietary, restrictive tools.
Once youâve taken the bait and are hooked up on their barb, youâll have a tough time shaking free. So what do you do? You buy even more of their tools, until youâre living in a duplicative, restrictive world, where negotiation isnât the game anymore. At this point, youâre inviting your teams to become disorganized and siloed.
âBut wait!â you say. âThere are other choices besides those, and even the big cloud providers have open source options. Iâm not stuck, right?â Yes and no. Open source platforms like Postgres, Kafka, and Apache Spark are cloud-neutral, which means that in theory you can avoid the trap of duplicative, restrictive tools. But in spite of this inviting premise, the landscape is still difficult to navigate and isnât nearly as âopenâ as theyâd like you to believe.
You see, many of these open source companies have a more subtle barb: theyâre open core, not truly open source. Even though they run on an open source core, and are therefore ostensibly more flexible in nature, they still incorporate a growing collection of features to differentiate from their own open source, all of which make it difficult to leave. Itâs understandable for companies to go this route. Itâs hard to make money with an undifferentiated commercial product. So any open source company that doesnât want to engage in a race to the bottom may do what they have to do.
So what have we learned? Operating across clouds isnât greatâŠbut itâs better than the alternative. This strategy can be just as confusing as managing one cloud provider. But if you do it right, it can be beneficial.
I did say there was one major exception, and Iâve already kind of introduced it to you. New barbless, open source models could change the game. Their primary aim is offering a better user/developer experience.
While open source is an answer to the bloated data stack, the market still has problems. It is difficult to navigate and many leaders are moving towards restrictive commercialization vs. true open source. Tune in next week to hear about how Tembo is bringing clarity to the market as a more pure open source solution (and still building a strong business in the process).
Ryâs Weekly Resources
Throwback to 2019: Peter Levine tracks the rise of open source software and talks about OSS 2.0 (as a16z calls it) in this blog post.
Jordan Peterson is certainly a controversial figure, but this interview with a cognitive neuroscientist about perception and a new model for the nature of reality was a great listen.
The Mochary Method is a great resource for all the "stuff" that building a company requires. It's a simple series of guides and how-tos covering everything from hiring and firing, to specific roles (like chief of staff), to methods for developing your company Mission, Vision, and Values. Highly recommend you spend some time clicking around the doc and soaking up all the method has to offer. (Tembo uses it!)