Peter Yang：软件开源化叙事下的三大护城河

I feel mixed about the "all software is becoming open source" narrative.

While it's true that many apps and games can basically be reverse-engineered with AI now, there are still moats and trade-offs:

1. Distribution and network effects.

It's still hard to get a lot of people to join a game at the same time or connect with each other.

The flip side here is that if you have distribution, you can make alot of money in a short period of time even if your product is just an AI wrapper.

2. Enterprise compliance and trust.

Enterprises drive ~60% of software spend.

AI might make it easier for apps to pass security and compliance reviews, but big companies still want legal liability, support, and someone to blame when things break.

I don't think any Fortune 500 company is switching from Adobe to an open-source alternative anytime soon.

The counter-argument here is that enterprises might just build apps internally, which many are already doing.

I also think that many enterprise apps have become so bloated that most companies only need 20% of the features which makes vibe coding an internal replacement easier.

3. Proprietary data and memory.

This is the #1 moat if your app can generate proprietary data on users or usage.

The counter-argument here is that if your app actually generates valuable data, you can probably make more money just making it free and selling the data to AI labs instead of charging $25/month or whatever as a SaaS.

For example, Reddit is making $200M+ from its data licensing deals with OpenAI and Google, which far exceeds whatever it made from paid consumer subscriptions.

What do people think? Is it harder or easier now to make money from software?