[sokoloff]

Absolutely. That risk is much lower than developing for the Alexa, Nest, Twitter, etc platforms. At some point, you’re forced to build on someone else’s platform(s), even if that platform is “Intel” or “AWS” as no one is doing the entire end-to-end value chain.

[loudmax]

Or build on an open an open source stack. Don't like Intel? Switch to AMD. Don't like AWS? Switch to another cloud.

Proprietary platforms lure developers to their stack by making development easy. Learning an open source is typically more difficult, but the reward is greater freedom. Believing you're forced to build on proprietary technology is a fallacy.

[kristianc]

This is the kind of thinking that leads startups to build their own autoscaling for their pre revenue CRUD app. Trying to roll your own cloud infrastructure will kill you far quicker than AWS shutting down your service.

And you will always be relying on someone else's proprietary tech - whether it's laptops or power stations or cloud infra. The trick is deciding then to outsource and when to build your own.

[pjmlp]

Open source only works as a business, when one can get money with some kind of subscription service, or selling hardware.

[loudmax]

There are a number of business models that are compatible with open source. But the question here isn't whether to open source your own software or not. The issue is whether it's a good idea to build on somebody else's proprietary stack.

It's in the long term interest of any business not to rely on the goodwill of some other business. This goes for Microsoft as much as for Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.