>> just packaging an existing open/free thing up and selling access to it.
Just like Apple packaging up CPUs and memory chips. I think most people in tech having a hard time to understand that UX is everything. You can take the Athena example of AWS, even though it is just PrestoDB the difference of UX is enormous. A data scientist (end user) cannot download presto compile it, create a EC2 cluster with failover push it there, configure it, performance tune it and keep updating it but she/he can got to AWS console and pull up the Athena interface and type in a query. This is why "just packing" is very important and people are willing to pay for it.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that like it's a bad thing. I'd _much_ rather be able to us their api to Ansible-up or point-n-click a MySQL database in RDS than to only have them offer some proprietary "Amazon Enterprise SQL Server". It's a good thing.
(I do, though, have some sympathy for the problems companies/projects like Mongo and Redis have where Amazon makes all the money off their products without contributing to the development of them. )
Just like Apple packaging up CPUs and memory chips. I think most people in tech having a hard time to understand that UX is everything. You can take the Athena example of AWS, even though it is just PrestoDB the difference of UX is enormous. A data scientist (end user) cannot download presto compile it, create a EC2 cluster with failover push it there, configure it, performance tune it and keep updating it but she/he can got to AWS console and pull up the Athena interface and type in a query. This is why "just packing" is very important and people are willing to pay for it.