Many businesses ARE fully vertically integrated. And many make real stuff, in meat space, where it's 100,000x harder. But software companies can't do it?
Obviously there's pros and cons. One of the pros being that you're so much more resilient to what goes on around you.
Name one commercial company that is entirely/fully vertically integrated and can indefinitely continue business operations 100% without any external suppliers.
It's a sliding scale - eventually you rely on land. But in n out is close. And they make burgers, which is much more difficult than making software. Yes, I'm being serious.
But if you look at open source projects, many are close to perfectly verifically integrated.
There's also a big big difference between relying on someone's code and relying on someone's machines. You can vender code - you, however, rely on particular machines being up and connected to the internet. Machines you don't own and you aren't allowed to audit.
You said "Many businesses ARE fully vertically integrated." so why name one that is close to fully vertically integrated, just name one of the many others that are fully vertically integrated. I don't really care about discussing things which prove my point instead of your point as if they prove your point.
> open source projects, many are close to perfectly verifically integrated
Comparing code to services seems odd, not sure how GitLab the software compares to GitLab the service for example. Code is just code, a service requires servers to run on, etc. GitLab the software can't have uptime because it's just code. It can only have an uptime once someone starts running it, at which point you can't attribute everything to the software anymore as the people running it have a great deal of responsibility for how well it runs, and even then, even if GitLab the software would have been "close to perfectly vertically integrated" (like if they used no OS, as if anyone would ever want that), then the GitLab serivice still needs many things from other suppliers to operate.
And again, "close to perfectly verifically integrated" is not "perfectly verifically integrated".
If you are wrong, and in fact nothing in our modern world is fully vertically integrated as I said, then it's best to just admit that and move on from that and continue discussing reality.
Obviously there's pros and cons. One of the pros being that you're so much more resilient to what goes on around you.