Comment It's about the messaging service (Score 1) 34
Terminal users are able to message other terminal users...considering the origins of the terminal (bond trading and pricing), I've always understood that the real value is in the messaging service. One of Bloomberg's ads touts the fact that they have other 600k "decision makers" on the platform, and their TV and radio hosts frequently mention that terminal users can send in messages directly during programming. No open-source option (or even Reuters Eikon) is ever going to replicate that. One can imagine how many block trades and bond trades get done over their messaging service.
A good percentage of the datasets on the terminal is publicly available. The rest is either third-party proprietary (e.g. exchange data like quotes trades) or is internally generated by teams like Bloomberg Intelligence. Again, open-source isn't going to get you very far. But very few people actually need what's offered for $24k/year/terminal; the $500/yr sub to Bloomberg.com (which used to not even be an option) is probably overkill for most.