Comment by derefr

> What if there was a marketplace where all the underlying tech was open-source?

What about the actual "marketplace" part? E.g. the channel-partner product listing management; the product recommendation engine that combines global factors (user reviews) with personalized interest; the shopping cart that packing-problem's your order on checkout into separate orders according to logistics-provider constraints, etc. When you say "open-source Amazon", this is the part I envision.

As far as I know, many pieces of the technology stack required to be an individual FBA seller already mostly exist as FOSS; but what does not exist as FOSS, is the technology to build your own two-sided-marketplace on which others can list products for sale.

Even more starkly, the software and systems to run an "Amazon-style" warehouse to back that marketplace — one where the sellers on your marketplace can send you SKUs of merchandise to hold such that you can then centrally fulfill orders for a bunch of sellers, and the whole ecosystem of backend support to allow them to remotely manage that held inventory — are nowhere to be found outside of Amazon itself, for love or money.