Vercel: The anti-vendor-lock-in cloud

This post elaborates on the concept of framework-defined infrastructure (FDI) as Vercel's core strategy to combat vendor lock-in. It contrasts FDI with vendor-primitive-based approaches (AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers) by highlighting how building against framework conventions (Next.js App Router, Remix loaders) ensures code portability. The post emphasizes that local development with FDI uses standard framework tooling (e.g., `next dev`) instead of platform-specific simulators. It provides evidence of Next.js's portability by noting that a majority of Next.js apps run outside of Vercel. The introduction of Next.js Build Adapters is presented as a formalization of the framework-platform contract, ensuring transparency and equal integration opportunities for all platforms. The post also discusses Vercel's commitment to standards for databases and AI services, while acknowledging the need for proprietary APIs for services like Vercel Sandbox and Edge Config, which are still callable from external infrastructure. The underlying motivation is to build enduring open-source software and foster a larger ecosystem.