In the last couple of days the debate about Open Source Licenses and the usage of Open Source Software by Cloud Vendors, Amazon in particular, has broken open into the mainstream technology news. With the MariaDB CEO[https://www.zdnet.com/article/mariadb-ceo-accuses-large-cloud-vendors-of-strip-mining-open-source/] leveling criticism at Amazon and Redis Labs[https://www.businessinsider.com/redis-labs-source-available-license-2019-2] doing away with Open Source Licenses on some of their code, we have to ask the question about, where open source will move to in the future. Will we see an increasing number of mayor consumers profiting off the work of small companies or can we continue building a borderless community, and what role can corporate Leadership play here?
Personal Background
Even before my starting my days at Univention [https://www.univention.com/], I have been an active user of open source software. During my college years, I submitted small patches and bug reports to a variety of projects and was often engaged in different discussion boards. Today, I am part of the management team of one of the leading open-source identity management software providers and still convinced, that open source is the way to go.
What personally convinced me, that open source is a good idea was not the costs question, but the fact, that I could quickly change things to match my personality and automate away with tasks, that I do not want to deal with personally. Likewise, the fact, that I could verify, what software does and how it possibly would spy on me or sell my data, became a stronger incentive with every report on security agencies.
The Debate about the Competitive Advantage
When building an offer as open source or on top of open source software, there are always a couple of advantages mentioned. However, the stories mentioned above sometimes contradict these stories. Thus let me briefly shine a light on them.
The most significant advantage mentioned is that you can start with an exceptionally well developed and mature software suite. If you look at databases, you can shell out thousands of dollars for Oracle Database licenses, or use MariaDB for free. If you later decide you need support, or if your customers need assistance, they can often buy it from commercial vendors or the leading developers.
However, if you are not fully committed to open source, you risk the wrath from the community. Open Source can only work if all consumers contribute to the best of their abilities back. Thus, if you are not playing by the rules, hide changes or make them intentionally incompatible to the upstream project for the sake of retaining an advantage, you might have a marketing nightmare on your hands. Amazon and Redis Labs are currently facing this problem. Now companies might be able to weather the storm, but in a time of skill shortages, it might be a handicap on your HR department.
There are also benefits to the sales cycle. You can have people run your product until they are sure, they like it and do not have to chase every download. Instead of scaling up to tackle lots of leads, you can focus on the once, who have already decided on purchasing your solution.
On the downside, if your biggest users are all neither paying nor giving their improvement, then your business and the software underneath it might become unsustainable. This factor is, what prompted Redis Labs to change their policies and what might affect others to corporate-sponsored open source projects to follow suit. Often, it might not even be, that the project is really in danger of shutting down, but the feeling of others not playing by the same rules is the problem.
Speaking out Against Silos
An action we can take in leadership positions is to speak out against silos and lock-ins. The story about MariaDB makes a great case against it. Speaking out about how we will behave concerning open source software and how we expect others to act is a crucial first step.
Towards the inside, it makes clear, that we expect our developers to be committed to the open source communities. This commitment includes making sure our code contributions are in line with the expectations of other developers and not hidden somewhere. Even if we decide not to open source all of our projects within the company, we still should treat the projects we use with respect.
To the outside, it should make clear, what we expect from others. Especially if we are the leaders in a project, we should actively communicate the expectations. Speaking out about where the issues are and which companies are not playing by the rules is critical to keep the community committed and to make a case for a better together.
Choosing a License, which can help us to enforce the requirement should be the last step legally. But as the case between KDE and Apple about Webkit has shown, if everyone plays by the rules everyone wins.
Conclusion
The changes in the licensing of multiple formerly open source projects and the accusations against Amazon show that we are at a critical point in the development of open source software. Without taking leadership within our companies, we should expect more and more restrictions to show up in the currently open source code. Speaking out is an important step to project our expectations and crucial to keeping our software open.