Luckily, this time. Not all startups who provide a service like this may choose to do the same when they implode.
Also many (the majority?) of Parse users signed up with them so that they wouldn't have to self host anything.
yes. Meaning there is a market to fill. Too small to be of interest to Facebook, but I'm sure people will build business upon the open source server.
using a service and using open source/open standards/etc aren't mutually exclusive things.
...except being able to integrate with an API does not mean you have the ability to self host, run, and maintain the product.
If you can't self-host because you don't have the ability to, but can't use cloud services either because they could shut down, what alternatives do remain?
I think use an open source platform which has both self-hosted and managed as options. So when managed shuts down, You can self host it. I'm the founder of CloudBoost.io - and We're an alternative to Parse. We're both on Docker (Self-hosted) and Managed at CloudBoost.io
Not betting on just anybody who launches.
The point was to not host yourself the backend app. So yes it's nice to get a "replacement" but still...