What is your monetization strategy? Presumably the goal of this business is to make money somehow?
Just curious.
I mean, say your service is popular, what stops a compeditor from simply providing the same service?
In the past one answer would be "they have to write code" but given that you explicitly see value in open-sourcing this, that answer falls away. Do you have any other way?
I ask this not to be a dick, but I'm genuinely curious as to your thinking here.
I ask this not to rain on your parade, but to probe how much of your word "hope" comes into play here.
I'm not sure a compeditor would be "less genuine" than you.
Customer service can be a differentiator, (so at least Google isn't your problem) but good customer service is expensive. AWS provides pretty good customer service.
Relying on brand is likely to hurt rather than help you - you'll be unknown whereas AWS is, well, AWS.
I get that if your target market is Open Source developers, then releasing source is a good thing. Hopefully you remain small enough to fly under the radar.
So, I'm assuming that your goal is to get a lot of users, and gain some market traction, demonstrating both that a market exists, and that people want to pay for this functionality.
So my point is, now that you are successful (to VC levels of success) then you become visible to others - like (but not necessarily limited to) AWS. At that point what stops them just using the code to offer the same service?
Obviously there is room for lots of small companies, providing useful services that customers pay for. If you plan to be small, and niche, then you can make a very successful business. But that business is perhaps better aligned with boot-strapping rather than have VC-style investors.