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For me the main question is not, is the code good enough or will competitors copy, but how can we make enough money to build a sustainable business?

The quoted and beloved open source projects are not good businesses: PostgreSQL, Python, Bitcoin, React

Mongo and Elastic are great, but exceptions. There are more successful closed source database companies than open source ones.

Open source companies are hard. However, they are super valuable for users.

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Mongo and Elastic have changed there licenses to the "service-side public license" (SSPL) which is a particular own flavor of AGPL. The OSI has stated that this isn't an open source license. [1]

Barring a discussion about whether or not a license is "open source", what matters is that these businesses asserted that commonly used licenses - (A)GPL, Apache, MIT,... - are leaving ample room for competitors to setup their own managed / hosted services and compete with them through scale (e.g. Amazon's Open Search offering undercutting ElasticSearch).

[1] https://blog.opensource.org/the-sspl-is-not-an-open-source-l...

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