Understanding how open source connects antifragile, undifferentiated heavy lifting, and tech debt

It is important to recognize that undifferentiated heavy lifting and technical debt are different from antifragility but related.

Undifferentiated heavy lifting is an effort that the customer doesn’t notice or care about. For example, whether your favorite bank builds its own server operating system or uses an established vendor’s operating system makes little difference to the online banking user experience, if things go well. However, it exposes the organization and its customer to more cost and risk because the bank’s core business isn’t building operating systems but providing banking and financial services industry-related products and services. While I don’t know any bank that builds its own operating systems, there are banks that are cobbling together fundamental services such as IAM, storage, logging, and monitoring with either their DIY or...