Open source software isn't a natural resource; neither is it finite nor used up. It may, however, be abandoned in an ever-changing technology landscape. Production of open source software starts with the investment of people's time, a scarce resource. Sustainability is about incentivizing people to invest their time in open source so that everyone can benefit from what they create. When you factor out time for life's necessities, a person's capacity to produce open source software is finite.
Sustaining Open Source Software
The ‘open source sustainability’ debate continues with yet-another-company relicensing their product away from an open source license to…
Open source sustainability
While only twenty years ago open-source software was simply a curiosity that attracted the attention of a few academics and was not seriously considered in the software industry, open-source infrastructure today is ubiquitous, powering applications in virtually every domain.
Sustainable Open Source: The Maintainers Perspective or: How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Open Source
We need Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities
Sustainable Free and Open Source software is not about business models, it’s about building sustainable communities.
Sustain
Sustain brings together practitioners, sustainers, funders, researchers and maintainers of the open source ecosystem. We have conversations about the health and sustainability of the open source community. We learn about the ins and outs of what ‘open source’ entails in the real world. Open source means so much more than a license; we're interested in talking about how to make sure that the culture of open source continues, grows, and ultimately, sustains itself. Newsletter
In Thrall to Scarcity
As I’ve talked about in this space in the past, I’ve been coming to some conclusions about free software (open source, or whatever you want to call it): the economics of it, like anythi…
Open source and the software supply chain
Managing something as esoteric as resources for building software with a variety of contributions made by the open source community is more amorphic.
Open source sustainability | TechCrunch
Open source sustainability has been nothing short of an oxymoron. Engineers around the world pour their sweat and frankly, their hearts into these passion
Open Source Sustainability
The status quo in open source is broken. Corporations profit hugely from open source libraries, and give almost nothing back, which leans to burnout which is bad for everyone.
The emerging economic paradigm of Open Source
The following commentary is part of First Monday's Special Issue #2: Open Source. Open Source developers have, perhaps without conscious intent, created a new and surprisingly successful economic paradigm for the production of software. Examining that paradigm can answer a number of important questions. It's not immediately obvious how Open Source [1] works economically. Probably the worst consequence of this lack of understanding is that many people don't understand how Open Source could be economically sustainable, and some may even feel that its potential negative effect upon the proprietary software industry is an overall economic detriment. Fortunately, if you look more deeply into the economic function of software in general, it's easy to establish that Open Source is both sustainable and of tremendous benefit to the overall economy. Open Source can be explained entirely within the context of conventional open-market economics. Indeed, it turns out that it has much stronger ties to the phenomenon of capitalism than you may have appreciated.
Some startups are going ‘fair source’ to avoid the pitfalls of open source licensing | TechCrunch
New alternative category to 'closed source' could help companies monetize software in the open -- without going all-in on open source.
When Free Software Isn't (Practically) Superior - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation
The Open Source Initiative's mission statement reads, “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”
Open Source is a cost-allocation system
Because the right to use the software is not tied to payment, the license does not connect the people who benefit, the people who decide, and the people who bear the costs. Projects have to build those connections deliberately through governance.
Open Source infrastructure deserves a business model
Open Source infrastructure is essential, invisible, and chronically underfunded. A more sustainable approach may be to connect the cost of running that infrastructure to the organizations that rely on it most.
What does a sustainable open source project look like?
Over the past couple years, thanks in part to Nadia Eghbal’s Roads and Bridges report, the world is starting to see the need for long-term…
