Open source projects routinely outperform their proprietary counterpart. However, it seems like in the age of SaaS our open source libraries, OSes, and other tools become parts of a SaaS solution, but rarely the solution itself (exception do exist of course). It just seems that compared to other types of software open source is very underrepresented in popular SaaS tools.
Why is this? Do you see thing changing?
I'm an idealist and I think it'd be great to wrestle CRMs amongst other things from proprietary companies for instance.
The reason open-source SaaS isn't more popular is that people don't want to worry about the technical details of the SaaS. I'm a software developer, and I'd still rather pay Trello a small amount of money rather than install and maintain my own open-source Trello. My time is much more valuable to me than the fee that Trello charges me.
The same is true of Gmail and all the other SaaS I use. I'm paying someone to maintain and operate these SaaS, not just to build the software in the first place.
1. https://trends.builtwith.com/cms