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. ]
For a long time I've been shocked about the large amount of venture money that goes to companies that are involved with trendy open source projects that just don't have a moat.
For instance I've heavily used Elasticsearch as have many other without ever paying money to Elasticsearch the company. Similarly, companies like Pivotal, Cloudera, Hortonworks, Continuum Analytics, etc. just seem to be a scam. So long as they are trendy some companies will think that they have to pay them money, until they realize that they don't.