Comment by yowlingcat
4 years ago
I don't think that open source work is a commodity. On the contrary, when well done, it functions almost as standard bearing, PR and legislation. Nothing about that says commodity to me. In fact, it's the kind of differentiated strategic work that's quite far away from commodity.
Commodity is not quite the correct term as in "a basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type".
What people want to say, I assume, is that building on Open Source is no competitive advantage because your competition can easily adopt it as well.