Honestly, for now they seem to be buying companies built around Open Source projects which otherwise didn't really have a good story to pay for their development long-term anyway. And it seems like the primary reason is just expertise and tooling for building their CLI tools.
As long as they keep the original projects maintained and those aren't just acqui-hires, I think this is almost as good as we can hope for.
(thinking mainly about Bun here as the other one)
And how likely is that?
Once you’re acquired you have to do what the boss says. That means prioritizing your work to benefit the company. That is often not compatible with true open source.
How frequently do acquired projects seriously maintain their independence? That is rare. They may have more resources but they also have obligations.
And this doesn’t even touch on the whole commodification and box out strategy that so many tech giants have employed.
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