No the problem is that it cant compete on the hardware part sometimes
Lets face it even if it something is open source, chances are that the most contributions/time are still spent by the person making it or the saas provider in this industry.
Imagine that someone goes ahead and launches a cheaper version of their saas and people go use that, since that person isnt having his time invested in the software as much as the original person and thus is willing to undercut him because his investment/returns expectations are very minimal whereas for the original saas it can be very high (writing good quality software which costs some developers real time and even real money)
Well this actually proves my point even further because the end users just care about price sometimes and since other competition with less investment can drive the company who created the software in the first place by undercutting them
This shows that, Companies shouldn't create open source software itself if people have such mindset since creating open source software/software in general takes sometime and it sucks if I create something, then someone grabs it and undercuts me.
This is the reason why people create source available licenses/use them. Time to create software isnt free in my opinion and we shouldnt treat it as such
Plus, what I am saying is that these licenses dont allow you to not self host, they allow you to self host, they are basically like MIT except with one clause that doesnt allow the vps providers/datacenters/other companies to compete directly against you.
Its the best of both worlds in a way.
You get money which can allow you to work full time on the project
Most people can audit the code/still run it locally/on their own VPS
People who want to rent your open source software basically by having infrastructure/undercutting you etc. actively harming you and both the community etc. are unable to bypass the intricacies of licenses.
No the problem is that it cant compete on the hardware part sometimes
Lets face it even if it something is open source, chances are that the most contributions/time are still spent by the person making it or the saas provider in this industry.
Imagine that someone goes ahead and launches a cheaper version of their saas and people go use that, since that person isnt having his time invested in the software as much as the original person and thus is willing to undercut him because his investment/returns expectations are very minimal whereas for the original saas it can be very high (writing good quality software which costs some developers real time and even real money)