Current dev tools make it possible to build open-source alternatives to established proprietary software incredibly fast. The ability to use Claude Cowork/Code as the frontend makes this even easier.

In legal tech alone, Anthropic released a set of legal plugins (https://claude.com/lp/cowork-for-legal), a former law firm associate released MikeOSS (https://mikeoss.com/), and now there’s Retriever (https://retriever-plugin.com/, I’m the author), an open-source document intelligence system.

More importantly, open-source solutions offer a level of customization that proprietary vendors often can’t match — and clients can modify them themselves.

How do proprietary vendors compete in this environment? What do their business models become?

Elastic Cloud seems like one successful example of building a strong business around open source. Will others follow?