[Raineer]

I don't know how we affect major change on this sort of issue, besides a vote with the wallet. I tend to encounter it most in areas which are already underserved - therefore you can choose not to pay but you're likely punishing yourself with a worse competing product.

The temptation will always be present for (some) organizations to use Open Source as a crutch to underfund development and support. I think it is a phenomenal way to grow your product in ways that you initially didn't expect from your customer base, but it cannot be the way in which your main support is bolstered.

[laurent92]

I think the real promise of open-source is “If we die, and it’s important to you, you can keep it working.”

Also, security bug bounties natively.

[detaro]

The former is fairly pointless for the case discussed here, API bindings to a proprietary product.

[jandrese]

That assumes the cloud service is irreplaceable. Having the source to the API means if Google shuts down their service you have the possibility of migrating it over to a new service with only a minimal API change. This assumes you have some way to get your data off before the service goes kaput though, which is not always the case.

[detaro]

It at least assumes that a competing service is different enough to give the API wrapper low value, yes.