Open source has already taken every infrastructure layer below the query. Operating systems, web servers, orchestration, and the transactional database all followed the same path: a neutral interface appeared, the layer commoditized, and value moved up the stack. Analytics is the last holdout, and it is falling now.

Open table formats made storage layout a public contract. Arrow and DataFusion turned the query engine into a shared substrate that anyone can build on. Modern hardware erased the distributed-systems requirement for most real workloads. Object storage became a coordination primitive, which is why the same unbundling is now reaching streaming.

This session maps the trends driving the shift, shows where lock-in moved rather than disappeared, and lays out how to position for it: which layers to own, how to evaluate a project’s governance as an engineering risk, and how to build an exit you may never need to use.