[Tara Tarakiyee]

"I want to talk about three examples I see of cracks that are starting to form which signal big challenges in the future of OSS."

I had a knee-jerk initial reaction to this post - what open source bubble?! - but Tara Tarakiyee makes some important points here about our dependence on open source code and how that might change over time.

The through line to all of them is about money. The OSI's new "open source AI" definition is loose because AI vendors likely couldn't make money otherwise (although whether they can make money anyway is still up for debate); source-available licenses have become prevalent because it's easier to sell commercial licenses and therefore make a living building software; much open source software was precariously funded through European Commission Next Generation Internet grants, which are now evaporating.

While we can stand for pure open source values all we like, the people who build open source software need to make a living: food must go on the table and they need a roof over their heads. Ideally their compensation would extend beyond those basic necessities.

This has been the perennial problem for open source: how can it be sustainable for the people who build it? We're not launching into a post-monetary Star Trek future any time soon. In the meantime, people need to be paid for their work, or open source runs the risk of being a hobbyist-only endeavor.

People won't pay for software that they don't need to pay for. I suspect open-core, which opens the core of a software platform while monetizing high-value extensions, is the best answer we can hope for. But even that might not be realistic.

#Technology

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