By The recent trend of companies altering their open-source licenses has caused significant disruption within the community, with many questioning the motivations of companies who choose to do so. In this episode, Mike Dolan, SVP and GM of Projects at the Linux Foundation, discusses the negative impact of open-source companies changing licenses on the community, strategies to maintain open-source integrity, and the evolving role of the Linux Foundation in supporting and connecting open-source communities. He says, “Where I think we’re seeing an issue is that mucking around with the open source licensing that underpins a lot of software that people took a dependency on.”
Negative impact of open-source license changes on the community
- Dolan discusses recent trends in the open-source community, particularly the negative impact of companies altering open-source licenses. He highlights how these license changes can disrupt dependencies and the community dynamic.
- Changes in open-source licenses can force developers to stop their involvement in the projects, causing significant professional and personal disruption.
- Dolan emphasizes the dilemma faced by the community between continuing open development or dealing with commercial restrictions, underscoring the rapid, collective response developers can make when faced with such changes.
- Dolan explains the trend of companies using licensing changes to address business issues, specifically mentioning cases like HashiCorp. While uncertain about the companies’ motivations, he criticizes the practice.
Motivations behind license changes and why it’s not a sustainable business model
- Open-source licenses traditionally lack use restrictions, which Dolan feels has been key to their success. Implementing restrictions contradicts the open-source principles and causes practical problems. Dolan talks about some of the potential motivations behind these changes.
- Dolan argues that changing licenses is not a sustainable business model and suggests alternative strategies like adjusting product strategies or adopting open-core models.
- Dolan shares his view on whether companies will continue to change licenses to try to solve business problems highlighting the mixed reception of MongoDB’s past license change.
- Companies should focus on unique value rather than restrictive licensing, although Dolan acknowledges that financial pressures might influence some companies’ decisions.
- Dolan acknowledges that companies need to pivot but stresses the importance of considering the open-source community they’ve built and the impact abrupt changes can have on the open-source community.
- Companies should focus on building ecosystems around core development, potentially using neutral foundations to manage projects collaboratively.
- Dolan discusses the challenges founders face with losing control when they seek investment and how even though founders may want to retain control over the company’s open-source principles, they can lack the expertise to enforce this.
Approaches to maintain open-source integrity and advice for new founders
- Future approaches could include safeguarding single-vendor open-source projects to prevent the fear of relicensing, although Dolan emphasizes that not all such projects are risky.
- Dolan outlines ways the Linux Foundation can help founders maintain open-source integrity while allowing investors to manage business aspects, including providing legal structures to ensure code bases stay open.
- Dolan highlights Solomon Hykes, CTO and Founder of Docker, who established the Open Container Initiative (OCI) and how this enabled widespread industry adoption and innovation and the benefits for startups.
- Dolan shares his advice to new founders considering open source, emphasizing that founders should be clear about which components to open source and understand the expectations of maintaining a community.
- Dolan explains the various models that can help maintain trust and sustainability in open-source projects, such as consortium models or contractual agreements. There must be an understanding of what to collaborate on openly.
- Dolan shares lessons learned from the Node.js / IO.js fork, emphasizing the importance of reconciliation and collaboration in the long run.
Evolving role of Linux Foundation in supporting open-source communities
- Dolan discusses the evolving role of the Linux Foundation in supporting open-source communities and its underlying goal to help connect like-minded people and facilitate conversations among those facing similar issues.
- One of the key reasons companies choose to work with Linux Foundation is because of their extensive legal resources to help ensure intellectual property is well-protected. Reconciliation and collaboration are also key to the organization’s purpose.
- Linux Foundation follows the activities of its members and developer communities and Dolan talks about how LF Research helps identify emerging areas by analyzing trends. He highlights potential areas of focus for the future.
Guest: Mike Dolan (LinkedIn)
Organization: Linux Foundation (Twitter)
This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.
