Every few years we have to be reminded that open source isn’t a business model. Let’s talk about the business dynamics that everyone seems to keep forgetting.
SHOW: 816
SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #816
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SHOW NOTES:
- Adam Jacobs discusses open source and business (The Changelog)
- “figure out how to play nice with competition” (Twitter)
- The will never be another Red Hat - Economics of OSS (a16z)
OPEN SOURCE IS A LICENSE, NOT A BUSINESS MODEL
- There are rules around software licenses (e.g. Apache, GPL, etc.)
- There are no rules about how people feel about software, creators or maintainers
FREE, FREE TIERS, EXTENSIONS, CLONES
- Red Flags: Writes most of the code, took VC funding (multiple rounds)
- Green flags: Lots of diverse (companies) contributors
- Yellow flags: Foundation owns copyright
- “There’s the business side and there’s the hippie side of OSS”
- “I have endless ambitions”
- “I didn’t build a forever entity”
- “When is the rug pull going to happen?”
- If a company takes VC funding, is open source anything more than a marketing vehicle?
- “Docker figured it out and now they are doing like $100M”. Did they?
- When is OSS personal, and when is it a company?
- Will there never be another Red Hat, or just not another Linux?
- How much is too much when determining if a company should give things away for free?
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