"Open Source" doesn't win, period, because it doesn't compete with anything. Open Source is not a business model or a product. It's an engineering widget. You can use it to build a product, or you can use it to make a jig to shore up an uneven table leg. Nobody cares about the license or whether they can read your code. They care if you build a product that solves their problem.<p>You know why companies use Open Source, for the most part? It's free. Not because it's better than the non-Open Source alternative, because very often, it is not. And not because they can read the source code, because companies need a working product much more than they need the ability to write their own patch for a bug. And not because of some feel-good notion of sharing with a community. It's just cheap and plentiful. Which is great, for the consumer. But it's not easy to build a company on a free product.<p>For the most part, Open Source products win by either being A) cheaper, B) Freemium, C) "Source-Available", D) being the incumbent, or E) a better product.<p>Sometimes "a better product" really does win out, if a product is able to provide features competitors don't. But incumbents have had the time and resources to establish lots of features, a solid track record, and lots of support and integrations, so <i>not</i> going with the incumbent tends to be a bad idea. People prefer Source-Available when it's completely free, and Freemium if it's not completely free. All things being equal, cheaper wins.