So, open source software be like standing on the shoulders of literally hundreds of people way smarter than you.
Let me give an example to illustrate the situation:
Bitcoin: exists because of tons of work on open source encryption libraries and open source C++ compilers, combined with Satoshi's unique understanding of economics and computer science. (BTC is in no way "normal" software)
BTC derived Altcoins: exist because of Bitcoin and throw in twists for the hashing algorithm or supply or economics.
Peercoin: exists because Sunny King thought that the Bitcoin economic model wasn't sustainable in the long term and sought alternatives.
DAC Concept: exists because of a Peercoin project called nubits.
Blurt: exists because of bitshares, Steem and Dan Larimer's mastery of C++ tooling like the Boost libraries. Borrows economic ideas from Bitcoin. Enhanced by Conan and GitLab and various JS tooling in the case of Blurt. With Blurt, we're adding a novel focus on integrating with other blockchains, software discipline, and user experience.
Tendermint: exists because of the reapplication of rather old research into Byzantine fault tolerant systems for blockchain purposes by Jae Kwon. Implemented because Go (open source) provides a simple and powerful language for systems programming. Uses many open source libraries. So, hundreds of people contributed to Tendermint before the first line of code was written.
Linux: exists because Linus Torvalds is stubborn and liked to play with computers. Maintained by Linus Torvalds, Linux now has thousands of contributors.
At a certain point, you realize that any product you make is the amalgamation of hundreds of different peoples work, all released into the commons for use.
Did you know
Facebook built a key piece of blurt?
Rocksdb, one of the things that keeps blurt graceful and fast, is a Facebook research product that examined what databases could look like because of the performance characteristics of SSD disks.
I guess what I'm betting on is that there is big potential in open value networks and in integration of fully open source systems.
Probably won't know for a year or two if the notions I'm betting on are the right ones, but I'll share my bets with you:
Open hardware matters because of security
POS chains are going to get smaller and will be created by teams of 3-5 people to serve the needs of individual communities
DEXes and IBC-like protocols will make exchange listing problems a thing of the past, even for chains with small user communities
Not just Rocksdb (which is a pretty cool piece of tech, badger takes it a step further with separated key and value logs which reduces write amplification), but also react, this web interface is the same base that was developed at Facebook.
I also think there is huge value in it, and I think most people who got the whiff of it from using Steemit in the first place - that the real world value of the currency can create incredibly potent motivations for competition and - well, unfortunately mostly to bad behaviours like spamming, scamming and trolling but still... for me it was the first time I was able to actually start to look at maybe becoming financially independent.
And yeah, dexes and interchain protocols are only just starting to warm up, and as you say, will be critical to the next phase of many chains with small pools of capital sitting in each, easy to deploy as apps like Ghost blog and phpBB, and exchanging value so easily and price discovery can even make a sub 100k/year organisation a small stream of capital for development through the actions of speculators trawling the webs for things that look likely to rise in value.