That’s a lot of Billions attached to a company built on the back of open source Linux. To give a quick reminder, we JUST DID A SHOW with special guest Joseph Jacks titled “Venture capital meets commercial OSS” and, of course, Red Hat was mentioned several times. They’re also on the $100M+ revenue commercial open source software company index we talked about. We’ll dig into this and keep you updated on this breaking news that’s just days off the heels of Microsoft’s official acquisition announcement of GitHub. Needless to say, this has been a BIG WEEK for commercial open source software companies.

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Joseph Jacks, the Founder and General Partner of OSS Capital joined the show to share his plans for funding the future generation of commercial open source software based companies. This is a growing landscape of $100M+ revenue companies ~13 years in the making that’s just now getting serious early attention and institutional backing — and we talk through many of those details with Joseph. We cover the whys and hows, why OSS now, deep details around licensing implications, and we speculate the types of open source software that makes sense for the types of investing Joseph and other plan to do.

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Little bits of appreciation can make big differences in maintainers’ lives. Here’s one way you can show appreciation that will take less than five minutes out of your day and just might make someone else’s. 🙌

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Adam and Jerod talk with Allen “Gunner” Gunn about Sustain Summit. What is it, the kind of conversations that happen there, issues the open source community is having right now, and how Sustain stands out from events called “unconferences.”

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Eryn O’Neil grew up in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago. When it came time for college, it was easy for her to move a few states over and go to college in a small town in Iowa. She now lives in Minneapolis, and after years of being self-employed, she just finished a months-long journey to find her next job. Eryn talks to me about being the first female engineering manager at her new company, what excites her about technology, the hurdles of married life, and staying healthy in a demanding industry.

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Adam and Jerod talk to Brett Cannon, core contributor to Python and a fantastic representative of the Python community. They talked through various details surrounding a talk and blog post he wrote titled “Setting expectations for open source participation” and covered questions like: What is the the purpose of open source? How do you sustain open source? And what’s the goal? They even talked through typical scenarios in open source and how kindness and recognizing that there’s a human on the other end of every action can really go a long way.

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I think the consensus agrees that sustaining open source software takes more than just money. And yet money often remains a crucial part of a larger need for open source to sustain AND thrive. So, if that’s the case…how should you use funding for your open source project? Brenna Heaps writes on the Tidelift blog: We’ve been speaking with a lot of open source maintainers about how to get paid and what that might mean for their project, and the same question keeps popping up: What do I do with the money? The tldr? Fund the project, community engagement, and pay it forward… But, it’s a short read and worth it — so go read this and then share it with your fellow maintainers.

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Have you seen this spreadsheet of open source software companies from Joseph Jacks? The criteria to be added to the sheet is; the company generates $100M+ revenue (recurring or not) OR generate the equivalent of $25M of revenue per quarter. These companies have found a way to build a very large business around one or many open source software projects. Anyone on this index surprise you?

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We’ve been tracking the community’s concerns and feedback about Commons Clause fairly well. In this post, Stephen O’Grady basically writes a book on the subject and the impact of this controversial software license. …the Commons Clause turns open source software into non-open source software, according to the industry’s accepted definition of that term. Specifically it says that the terms of the original open source license notwithstanding, you may not sell software “whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the Software.” …there are several logical questions to explore regarding the Commons Clause. What are the drivers behind it? What does it mean for the companies that employ it and the wider industry? And lastly, is it a good idea? Set aside 20 minutes and read this if you care about how this license is becoming popular among those (Redis as of recent) who are protecting their right to generate revenue from their open source code, while removing that ability for everyone else.

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Mahdi Yusuf worked a startup in his twenties and wasn’t worried too much about his health. When he quit that job, he decided to take better care of himself and lost fifty pounds. Now, he’s the CTO of Gyroscope, a startup that aims to be the operating system for the human body, but ever since joining, has gained weight back. Mahdi talks to me about how Gyroscope is trying to help people understand their bodies better, growing up with a love for computers, and trying to be healthy with a busy life.

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After a very difficult 2014 that put Justin Dorfman in the hospital, he vowed to never go back. Justin has Bipolar I disorder, so coming to terms with his limitations and the sacrifices he needs to make to stay healthy hasn’t been easy. He talks to me about his early BMX dreams, his transition from engineering to marketing, and the stigma around mental health.

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In response to the post from Paul Dix on the misunderstandings going on around Redis and the Common Clause license — Matt Klein tweeted: Won’t defend Redis Labs, this is a dead end move, but there needs to be more recognition that the economics of OSS are fundamentally broken. In his post he starts by saying… I want to provide a long form discussion of my two Twitter threads as this topic is nuanced and quite interesting. Note: this post is heavy on opinion and light on facts/references backing up those opinions. Thus, preface everything that follows with “IMO.” Matt goes on to share some history of open source software and his opinions on modern expectations of software being free and open, startups and open source, and who pays…

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There is a big debate underway over Commons Clause and its recent application to certain Redis enterprise add-ons. The Commons Clause license is open source and was drafted by Heather Meeker — whom you might remember from Request for Commits #9. This language from the license forbids the ability to sell the software (similar to the the Elastic License discussed on The Changelog #292). …the grant of rights under the License will not include, and the License does not grant to you, the right to Sell the Software. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes for ZDNet: Redis Labs has been unsuccessful in monetizing Redis, or at least not as successful as they’d like. Their executives were discovering, like the far more well-known Docker, that having a great open-source technology did not mean you’d be making millions. Redis’ solution was to embrace Commons Clause. This license forbids you from selling the software. It also states you may not host or offer consulting or support services as “a product or service whose value derives, entirely or substantially, from the functionality of the software”. I’m really curious to see how this tread plays out as more and more organizations see service providers (cloud hosting, SaaS, etc.) and consultants (support contracts, etc.) “getting rich” off of the projects they work so hard to maintain as open source, while they struggle to find a sustainable model for funding the efforts to keep the open source ship afloat.

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Eric Berry started Code Sponsor a year ago because of his passion for finding ways to sustain and fund open source developers. He ultimately had to shutdown due to potential legal issues with GitHub, but was given new life as CodeFund when he went to work for ConsenSys and Gitcoin. We talked through the backstory of this idea, why he’s so passionate about funding open source, ethical advertising, being unapologetically focused on your mission, the value of honesty and openness, and the future direction of CodeFund.

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Paul Dix shared his thoughts on the subject of Redis and the misunderstandings going on around Redis Common Clause Licensing. Paul writes on the InfluxData blog: The accusation that RedisLabs did a bait and switch is entirely unfair. They’ve been funding open source Redis development for years and that work is now and will be in the future under the liberal BSD license. It’s not like they tricked a bunch of people into using Redis and pulled the rug out from under them. I’m sure that more than 99.99% of the Redis users are completely unaffected by this. And for those others, it’s not like the code that’s already out there is unusable. To my knowledge they can’t retroactively apply the license. So we’re really only talking about forward development to specific modules (not Redis core). Paul also shares how he favors open core, and the issues he has with other models to sustain the development of open source at scale. Open core is a fairly honest way to go about developing open source software. As long as you’re clear about what is open and what is closed. Bradley Kuhn, Executive Director and President of Software Freedom Conservancy, also shared some thoughts on “Commons Clause” style licenses. Update 2018/08/24 @ 15:09 — this Twitter thread is a nice read too.

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Marc Gravell: I absolutely love open source and the open source community. I love sharing ideas, being challenged by requirements and perspectives outside of my own horizon, benefitting from the contributions and wisdom of like-minded folks etc. … But: the consumers of open source (and I very much include myself in this) have become… for want of a better word: entitled. We’ve essentially reinforced that software is free (edit: I mean in the “beer” sense, not in the “Stallman” sense). That our efforts - as an open source community: have no value beyond the occasional pat on a back. I’m glad to see that as our industry matures, we’re addressing topics like these. I don’t know where to begin addressing this problem though. How do you shift the mentality of people who should start paying for things that have always been free? One thing is for sure, this isn’t sustainable. And let’s not forget, that this problem also further exacerbates the lack of developers of color who contribute to open source. Marc asks if this is a problem, and I say hell yes it is.

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The rumors of Redis taking on a new Creative Common license ARE NOT true. Antirez (Salvatore Sanfilippo) writes on his personal blog: Redis is, and will remain, BSD licensed. However in the era of uncontrollable spreading of information, my attempts to provide the correct information failed, and I’m still seeing everywhere “Redis is no longer open source”. The reality is that Redis remains BSD, and actually Redis Labs did the right thing supporting my effort to keep Redis core open. Here’s what IS happening… What is happening instead is that certain Redis modules, developed inside Redis Labs, are now released under the Common Clause (using Apache license as a base license). This means that basically certain enterprise add-ons, instead of being completely closed source as they could be, will be available with a more permissive license. Here’s how Redis is licensed.

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Do you want more contributors and maintainers on your project? Mike McQuaid, maintainer of Homebrew (macOS package manager), writes on his personal blog: Here are a a few guidelines in thinking about this: Most contributors were users first (“scratching your own itch”: most people start contributing to an open source project to solve a problem they are experiencing) Most maintainers were a contributor and user first (people don’t just jump into maintaining a project without helping to build it first) Maintainers cannot do a good job without remaining a user (to maintain context, passion and empathy) Combined, these start to look a bit like a sales funnel. People have to travel through each stage and there’s a fairly hefty drop-off at each one. Also check out ~> Open source maintainers owe you nothing

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Everyone knows that React is one of the most popular JavaScript libraries for building user interfaces — and many users of React choose it because they think it’s supported by Facebook. But is it really? That depends on what you mean by React, and what you mean by support. Keenan Szulik writes on the Tidelift blog: Since its release in 2013, React has grown into a proper open source phenomenon … with more than 100,000 GitHub stars, over 300,000 dependent repositories, and more than 800 contributors. Facebook’s contributions to React and the JavaScript ecosystem around it are truly epic — the stuff of legend. But when we dive into the dependencies of the default create-react-app, only 24 of the 1,103 packages come from repositories in Facebook’s GitHub organizations. That’s less than 3% of the dependencies required to build the “Hello, World” app with create-react-app! So who supports React?

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If you’re a maintainer who’s feeling the burden of your open source software, you have a few options to consider according to Richard Littauer — you can… Onboard more maintainers - spread the burden to more of the community Clearly set expectations - explain your software is provided on an “as is” basis Hire a maintenance company - wait, what?! Is that we’ve come to? Are we now hiring code maintenance companies to maintain our open source? I’m actually quite interested in the economies around this, so let this post serve as an open invite to Richard to join me on Founders Talk for a discussion on the state of open source maintenance and his lessons learned building Maintainer Mountaineer.

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Pia Mancini, CEO of Open Collective: BackYourStack is the first step to help companies discover the dependencies in their stack that are seeking to become sustainable and a way to start subscriptions to them. Each collective can set up different tiers for their subscriptions such us brand visibility, support or in-house training. Just input your GitHub org and BackYourStack will generate a list of supportable projects by analyzing your dependencies. This is a great idea and a good first step toward making it easier for organizations to put their money where their source is. (YMMV as the results are a bit limited (and maybe buggy?) at the moment. Our report is saying we only rely upon 1 open source project, which definitely doesn’t cover it.)

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Adam and Jerod invite back Katrina Owen after years away focusing on Exercism—a 100% free platform for code practice and mentorship with over 2500 exercises and 48 different language tracks. They talk to Katrina about how the platform has changed, the direction it’s taken, the backstory on the recently launched version 2, and how she plans to turn Exercism into a sustainable business. Also, what happens if that doesn’t work?!

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This post from Eric Holmes details how package managers can be used in supply chain attacks — specifically, in this case, a supply chain attack on Homebrew — which is used by hundreds of thousands of people, including “employees at some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley.” On Jun 31st, I went in with the intention of seeing if I could gain access to Homebrew’s GitHub repositories. About 30 minutes later, I made my first commit to Homebrew/homebrew-core. If I were a malicious actor, I could have made a small, likely unnoticed change to the openssl formulae, placing a backdoor on any machine that installed it. If I can gain access to commit in 30 minutes, what could a nation state with dedicated resources achieve against a team of 17 volunteers?

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This interview with Evan You (founder of Vue.js) is all about the path that led him to being able to work full time on open source. It’s a good read 👍 (Want to dive deeper? We’ve interviewed Evan on The Changelog #184 as well as Request For Commits #12)

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Thirteen years ago, Ashley Baxter inherited the family insurance business when her Dad passed away. Even though she’s a talented photographer, and built a successful photography business, the insurance industry kept calling her name. Ashley talks about what excites her about insurance, the challenges of running a business, and how burnout forced her to focus.

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