The open source community strikes back

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, a deceptively simple idea started to take hold within the development community: Software, given its immense potential as an engine of change, should be made free and open to everyone. Unsurprisingly, this idea—most commonly associated today with the open source software movement—was initially met with fierce resistance from the business community. 

However, over the past 40-odd years, the open source software movement has come quite a long way. What was once famously referred to as “a cancer” by then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has become the very definition of mainstream, with more than 78% of businesses using open source software in their day-to-day operations, and a whopping 96% of software containing at least some open source components. Meanwhile, as of 2022, Microsoft itself had released more than 1,200 open source projects and joined more than 20 open source organizations. 

From free and fringe to open source and mainstream

This dramatic rise of open source wasn’t the result of some sudden wave of enlightenment. On the contrary, it was a very conscious and calculated effort by pragmatic advocates to make the idea more palatable to the corporate community. In order to do so, these “boardroom whisperers” thought it would be best to redirect the focus of the movement away from the philosophical, ethical, and sociopolitical, and instead towards the more practical, free-market-friendly benefits associated with permissive licensing. Unlike the “Free Software Movement” that predated it, the advocates of open source went to great lengths to convince the profit-motivated masters of Silicon Valley and elsewhere that such a licensing model was anything but charitable. And in no way were they being misleading. The now-highly-familiar open source licensing model has very real, dollars-and-cents advantages to businesses developing software.

From enormous cost savings and accelerated time to market, to increased developer productivity and dramatically lowered barriers to adoption, the open source model offers businesses enormous advantages over proprietary software licenses—especially when coming fresh off the starting block.  

However, while open source has enjoyed widespread acceptance over the past couple of decades, it has been embraced primarily as a business model, rather than as a philosophy or set of principles. And over recent years, this schism has grown increasingly problematic. 

Introducing the open source bait and switch

Over the past half decade or so, this division has started to manifest itself in a phenomenon which I think we reluctantly need to call “the open source bait and switch.” Under the open source bait and switch, eager software startups wholeheartedly embrace the open source model (and all of its inherent advantages) in their early stages, only to claw back their licenses’ permissiveness when they (and/or their investors) decide it’s time to shift priorities from growth to profitability.

We’ve seen this happen again and again. Once “proudly open source” organizations—such as Elastic, HashiCorp, and Redis—waved the open source flag for years, cultivating massive communities and user bases, only to suddenly pull the rug out from beneath the entire endeavor with a pivot away from permissiveness. 

Just how egregious the bait and switch may be differs from case to case, but the general principle remains. These businesses are using the open source model as a competitive advantage while seeking growth, only to violate the inherent promises made to their communities, contributors, and users when it comes time to cash in. 

Open source indignation gives rise to grass roots action

As you might imagine, members of the open source community have been far from pleased, and they let their frustration be known. However, for a while, it looked as if consternation would be the worst of it for these open source turncoats. Ultimately, some initial blowback from the “true believers” would surely blow over, these organizations reasoned, leaving their large (and largely dependent) user bases with no other option but to begrudgingly accept their new terms and soldier on. 

For a brief time, it looked as if the open source bait and switch was a success. What could the community do but shake their collective fists? For some time, even I thought the open source turncoats might get away with it. Everywhere you looked, there were forum posts, op-eds, and think pieces sparking fears of a time of reckoning for open source altogether. However, as it was in the beginning, the open source movement today is still supported by and reliant upon the knowledge, will, and expertise of its communities. And the communities are fighting back. 

Forks in the road for Redis, HashiCorp, and Elastic

Until recently, it looked as if the open source community had no real recourse against these open source turncoats. But then, this March, after Redis switched from an open source BSD license to source-available licenses, the Linux Foundation announced they would be creating their own fully open source fork of Redis, called Valkey.  

The announcement quickly garnered ardent, widespread support from not only rank-and-file open source advocates, but also some less expected sources, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Oracle. (My company, Percona, is also part of the contributor group.) Thus far, Redis has effectively dug in its heels, but it’s safe to say, that with so much popular and powerful support being thrown behind the Valkey fork, the company is undoubtedly feeling some pressure. 

However, if misery loves company, then Redis might take some solace in knowing they’re not totally alone. Not long before the Valkey announcement, the open source community struck back against HashiCorp’s bait and switch with a fully open source fork of Terraform by the name of OpenTofu. At a somewhat smaller scale, Elastic’s shift away from open source led to projects like OpenSearch and Open Distro, under development using the highly permissive Apache 2.0 license. 

Ultimately, the success of these projects will dictate whether we see the open source bait and switch persist or disappear. Though the dust has yet to settle, if I were starting an open source software company today, I’d be very, very wary of attempting such a move. Don’t get me wrong, “openness” comes in many shades, and permissiveness and profitability needn’t be mutually exclusive. However, if you’d like to take a “middle path” somewhere between highly permissive and full-blown proprietary, the correct approach is simple—be honest. If you’re forthcoming about your ideals and intentions from the beginning, then blowback shouldn’t be a concern. Most importantly, remember that open source is, at its core, a philosophy, not a business model. 

Never underestimate the power of community 

A recent study from the Harvard Business School found that open source software has saved companies almost $9 trillion in development costs over the years, by allowing them to build their products on top of high-quality free software and components. All the would-be open source opportunists out there should pause to ask themselves, is that a hand you’d truly want to bite? 

At the end of the day, the ubiquity of open source software is not a byproduct of the corporate world buying into the founding principles of free and open software development. However, the movement’s continued existence, and the immeasurable benefits it’s afforded the wider tech industry, have relied on those principles—if only for the simple fact that the hundreds of thousands of developers, contributors, maintainers, and advocates that make up the open source community continue to be motivated by those very same principles. 

So, for those organizations tempted to have their open source cake and eat it too, I offer a word of warning: You are more dependent on these “true believers” than they are on you. Look no further than the recent forking of Redis and Terraform to see where the true power lies in the land of open source. 

Ann Schlemmer is CEO at Percona.

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