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So you want to compete with or replace open source

We are living through an interesting moment in source-available software.1 The open source movement has always had, and continues to have, a solid grounding in grassroots programmers building tools for themselves and forming communities around them. Some looming giants brought on large sums of money – Linux, Mozilla, Apache, and so on – and other giants made do without, like GNU, but for the most part if anyone thought about open source 15 years ago they were mostly thinking about grassroots communities who built software together for fun.

The economics that drew commercial interest into the movement work specifically because of this collaboration – because the FOSS model allows businesses to share R&D costs and bring together talent across corporate borders into a great melting pot of innovation. And, yes, there is no small amount of exploitation going on as well; businesses are pleased to take advantage of the work of Jane Doe in Ohio’s FOSS project to make themselves money without sharing any of it back. Faced with these facts, there have been some challenges to the free and open source model coming up in the past few years, some of which are getting organized and starting to make serious moves.

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