What are “commodities”?

Commodities are the opposite of USPs (Unique Selling Points). The question is: What can’t you earn money with? These are basic functionalities or processes that many companies need to offer but that don’t differentiate themselves from its competitors. From a compliance perspective, commodities are the things that competitors are allowed to jointly work on, based on open source. The development of those commodities costs time and resources but they are not explicitly valued by the customers. They simply assume their existence – like having light in the fridge.