Open source beyond the market

In the end, the fragile balance of open source—that unlikely blend of personalities and incentives that has driven tech’s innovation engine throughout the 21st century—won’t be upset by the odd state actor, or by malicious spam, or whatever scary new thing The Register is up in arms about tomorrow. It can only be disrupted when the community comes ... See more

Open-source projects—not just commercial open source—have served as a critical driver for the improvement of products for decades. However, some software is going to remain closed source. It’s just the nature of first-mover advantage. But when transparency and extensibility are an issue, an open-source successor becomes a real threat.

Looking at the landscape of open source software today, I note two things. First, successful open source platforms tend to be partnered with caretaker organizations. Wikipedia has the Wikimedia Foundation, Linux has the constellation of organizations around the Linux Foundation, and Kubernetes has the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Second, open... See more