The changing landscape of the open-source industry has taken a potentially dark turn in the last few years. Instead of focusing on inclusion, innovation, and collaboration a new generation of so called open source drive companies has emerged flush with investor money and looking to maximize the returns for their investors and shareholders at all costs. In an effort to accelerate “revenue” and “profits” these companies are looking to rewrite the definition of what they consider open source. We are in a battle for not only the hearts and minds of the FOSS community but our collective future. As new developers start open source projects more will be compelled to choose more restrictive licensing models ( i.e. SSPL ), invest less in the community, and “control” as much of the code and product as possible. I will talk about the trend, talk about the common business models, and offer a few alternatives.
Speakers: Matt Yonkovit