Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) is an only-loosely-agreed-upon term for businesses built upon selling open source products. COSS has seen two significant waves pass, with a third now emerging. The head of each wave lasts approximately a decade. The tail of each wave extends into the future indefinitely. Each wave subsumes all previous waves. The first wave was characterized by shrinkwrapping and commercial support. Peaking in the mid-1990s, Red Hat was the poster-child of selling support for software written by other people.
Wave: Small Business Software - Wave Financial
Create beautiful invoices, accept online payments, and make accounting easy—all in one place—with Wave’s suite of money management tools.
W3C re-launched as a public-interest non-profit organization
12 November 2025 | Isolated Web Apps - Current state and future direction | Calendar
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools
WAVE® is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. Our philosophy is to focus on issues that we know impact end users, facilitate human evaluation, and to educate about web accessibility.
Roadmap: Open Source
After years of investing in open source software, we’re releasing our thinking on what positions these companies as emerging technology giants.
RFC 0015 · Pi Licensing
Mario Zechner is joining us at Earendil and we just acquired Pi. An Open Source project. Earendil is a venture-backed for-profit, public benefit corporation. How do those things go together?
The Open Source Distributor Business Model
Dirk Riehle, dirk@riehle.org, Published in Computer vol. 54, no. 12 (December 2021), pp. 99-103. Abstract This article defines and discusses one particular commercial open source business model, ca…
Software Sharing for Modern Companies | Fair.io
Fair Source is an alternative to closed source, allowing you to safely share access to your core products. Fair Source Software (FSS) can be used with minimal restrictions, and becomes Open Source after a period of time.
Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009
Open Source Explained — Open Indie
Musings on the concept of ‘open source’, in the broadest possible definition of the term. Also an invitation to become a participant in ...
Web of the People — Open Indie
Whether you think of web3 as the advent of peer-to-peer protocols, coin-operated blockchains or autocomplete-AI synthesizers, change is c...
Open Source Resistance
A direct-action manifesto for maintainers keeping open source alive on company time.
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.
Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open S…
An inside look at modern open source software developer…
