Open Source Needs to Remain Open

For the last 15 years, I have been deeply involved in the open source community. Not as a developer but as a marketer and community organizer. I have seen how open source has fundamentally changed the technology industry. It has empowered the developer to be the New Kingmaker, it has accelerated the pace of innovation, it has changed how technology is adopted by large enterprises and it has created opportunities for individuals that didn’t exist before open source. Without a doubt open source has been a huge success.

In the last year, some VC funded ‘open source’ companies have started to claim open source is broken and needs to be changed. They claim the big cloud vendors, meaning AWS, are taking advantage of open source for their own good, so the VC funded startup can’t make a profit. The recent quote from Redis Labs CEO Ofer Bengal:

“When we came out with this new license, there were many different views,” he acknowledged. “Some people condemned that. But after the initial noise calmed down — and especially after some other companies came out with a similar concept — the community now understands that the original concept of open source has to be fixed because it isn’t suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly power to adopt any successful open source project without contributing anything to it.”

IMHO, this is utter bull shit. Open source is working just fine. Redis just doesn’t have a product strategy that can sustain competition. They also can’t generate the growth rates their VC investors are expecting from their $60 million investment. Oh and the large cloud vendors, Microsoft, Google, AWS, IBM are consistently in the top 10 contributors to the open source community.

The open source community needs to to a better job communicating the value and meaning of open source. We can’t let some VCs take over the meaning of open source. For this reason, I have decided to run for a seat on the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). For those that might not know, OSI is the not-for-profit that is the steward of the Open Source Definition and certifies open source licenses. The OSI is the best organization to take the lead on communicating the meaning and value of open source.

I am running to join the OSI board so I can help OSI promote the value and meaning of open source. Open source works when people step up with contributions. This is why I don’t want to just complain but contribute to a solution. I have spent 15 years communicating the value of open source communities so I hope this experience will help OSI.

Voting for the OSI board starts March 4 and ends March 15. You need to be an Individual Member of OSI to vote. If you are not a member, it only costs $40 to join. If you are a member, you will receive an email with the voting instructions.

Please consider joining the OSI so we can make it a strong voice for open source. We need to invest to make sure open source stays open.