Open source has a profoundly positive impact on innovation, but requires loving care and engineering expertise to maintain and utilize effectively. Companies like EDB and Roadie facilitate open-source innovation by providing support, maintenance, and infrastructure, allowing teams to focus on their core competencies. The choice of proprietary over open-source products often comes down to the need for guarantees such as SLAs, support, and security patches, as well as expertise in areas like consultancy and production adoption. Building relationships with the maintainers and contributing to the open-source community are key to creating a flourishing ecosystem. Ultimately, commercial presence in the open-source community can accelerate innovation but should not be necessary.