2019 was a crazy year for licensing in open source. Luis Villa shared his take at what happened last year…

2019 was the most active year in open source licenses in a very, very long time, with news from China to Silicon Valley, from rawest capitalism to most thoughtful ethics. Given all that, I thought it would be worth summarizing the most interesting events, and sharing some reflections on them.

A stand out to me was on the subject of money…

Inevitably, as open source has “won,” money has become ever more central to how it functions. It turns out it is hard to sustain the entire software industry on a part time basis! Licensing has not played a central role in this discussion, but 2019 gave several examples of how licensing and money are entangled.