Comment by 0xbadcafebee

Before Open Source, you hired a company that "did" software/computers. You knew jack shit about it and couldn't do anything about it other than "run commands".

After Open Source, you still did that, but you also occasionally hired people to download and cobble stuff together to save money, and maybe one or two people to write code to help cobble together stuff.

Over time this evolved into managing entire "technology divisions" of people writing code and cobbling together stuff, to manage larger and larger internal projects, to support teams, to build components, to eventually be used by one internal product used by a customer. 50 different teams to build components, and 1 team actually servicing a customer. And each component built is exactly the same as components built at other companies. Sometimes even exactly the same as other components in the same company.

Nowadays a Big Bank might produce more software than Facebook, and none of it ever escapes into the world as Open Source. Whole oceans of software are birthed, live and die in the shadows. Millions of lines of code that live for half a decade. Constantly manufacturing their own hammers because they believe theirs will work better than an existing hammer, or because they're too lazy to learn how to use an existing hammer. And never sharing their custom-built hammers with the rest of the world. All because some clueless executives believe this solves their business case better than buying something off the shelf and making it work for their business case.