The last several years has brought explosive growth to the realm of open source. Many new projects have started, and many have went on to become foundational components of running applications at scale. Cloud providers have focused on a strategy of embracing open source not only to help build value added services, but to also make it easy to use open source on their compute platforms. Open source companies have reacted by changing their software licenses in an attempt to cut out the Cloud providers. So what does this mean for the future of open source? In this talk we’ll revisit some of the foundational tenets of open source, and compare these ideas to where open source has evolved. We’ll also talk about the pros and cons, and maybe unintended consequences, of Cloud based computing.

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RETHINKING OPEN SOURCE
IN THE AGE OF CLOUD
Michael Ducy

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Agenda
Roots of Open Source
Open Source Today
Licenses, Licenses, Licenses
Why Open Source?
Where do we go?

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Who am I?
- Michael Ducy
- All Things Open Source @ Sysdig
- Project Maintainer: https://falco.org
- Formerly: Chef, BMC, Orbitz
- Cloud, DevOps
- Open Source user since 1997 (I’m old)

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Roots of Open Source

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GNU/FSF/GCC

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Back in the day...

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Back in the day...

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Back in the day...

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Back in the day...

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How do you open closed platforms?

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GNU/FSF/GCC

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Cathedral & the Bazaar
Eric S. Raymond

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Cathedral & the Bazaar
“Every good work of software starts by
scratching a developer's personal itch.”
- Eric S. Raymond

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Back in the day...
Open Source was about:
- Itch Scratching
- Opening up access to compute

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PHP vs Cold Fusion vs ASP

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PHP enabled you to...
- Have easy access to a rich & powerful language.
- Have easy access to a rich set of OSS integrations.
- MySQL, Postgres, Apache
- Run it yourself using OSS software
- Linux, Apache, MySQL

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Open Source Today

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The Bazaar == Github

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Cathedral & the Bazaar
“Every good work of software starts by
scratching a developer's personal itch.”
- Eric S. Raymond

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The Bazaar & the Cloud
“Every good work of OSS software starts
by scratching a Cloud Provider’s itch.”
- Michael Ducy

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The Bazaar & the Startup
“Every good work of OSS software starts
by scratching a startup’s itch.”
- Michael Ducy

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The Bazaar & the VC
“Every good work of OSS software starts
by scratching a VC's portfolio itch.”
- Michael Ducy

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Something special is happening...
“Fast-forward to today and we’ve witnessed the growing excitement in the space:
Red Hat is being acquired by IBM for $32 billion (3x times its market cap from
2014); MuleSoft was acquired after going public for $6.5 billion; MongoDB is
now worth north of $4 billion; Elastic’s IPO now values the company at $6
billion; and, through the merger of Cloudera and Hortonworks, a new company
with a market cap north of $4 billion will emerge. In addition, there’s a growing
cohort of impressive OSS companies working their way through the growth stages
of their evolution: Confluent, HashiCorp, DataBricks, Kong, Cockroach Labs and
many others. Given the relative multiples that Wall Street and private
investors are assigning to these open-source companies, it seems pretty
clear that something special is happening.”
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/12/how-open-source-software-took-over-the-world/

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Reactionary Licensing

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Reactionary Licensing
- MongoDB
- https://www.mongodb.com/press/mongodb-issues-new-server-side-public-license-for-mongodb-community-server
- Redis
- https://redislabs.com/blog/redis-labs-modules-license-changes/
- Chef
- https://blog.chef.io/chef-software-announces-the-enterprise-automation-stack/
- Elastic
- https://www.elastic.co/what-is/open-x-pack

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Reactionary Licensing
- MongoDB
- “New License Leads the Way for Open Source in the Cloud Era.”
- Redis
- “...goal — stopping cloud providers from taking successful open source projects...”
- Chef
- Open the code. License the packages & restrict use.
- Elastic
- “It’s hard to run two bazaars”.

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Reactionary Licensing - Elastic

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Elastic: “Opening the Bazaar”
“The interaction model for open X-Pack will be
identical to the open source Elastic Stack,
including the ability to inspect code, create issues
and open pull requests via our existing GitHub
repositories.”

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For every action….

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For every reactionary relicensing
there’s an equal and opposite
reaction from a Cloud Provider.

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Why Open Source?

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Why Open Source?
Open Source Communities:
- Develop in the open because
- Less Bugs
- More collaboration/ideas
- Enables access to technology
- Enable and support
contributors
- Enable and support end users
- Scratching a shared itch
Cloud Provider:
- Grow topline revenue
- Grow profit margin
- Operate at low cost
- Metric: Stock Price
- Itch: Drive compute
consumption

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Why Open Source?
Open Source Communities:
- Develop in the open because
- Less Bugs
- More collaboration/ideas
- Enables access to technology
- Enable and support
contributors
- Enable and support end users
- Scratching an itch
Software Company:
- Grow topline revenue
- Grow profit margin
- Operate at low cost
- Metric: ARR/IPO/Exit
- Itch: Drive software
consumption

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Why Open Source?
Open Source Communities:
- Develop in the open because:
- Less Bugs
- More collaboration/ideas
- Enables access to technology
- Enable and support
contributors.
- Enable and support end users.
- Scratching an itch .
Business:
- Grow topline revenue
- Grow profit margin
- Operate at low cost
- Metric: Varies
- Itch: Scratching an itch.

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https://www.wired.com/story/developer-deletes-code-protest-ice/

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Where do we go?

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Where do we go?
- Be honest about intentions:
- Open source for open source principles
- Open source to build a business
- Open source to run a business

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Where do we go?
- Enable OSS community rights:
- Code under OSI license.
- Community distributed packages under
distribution license.
- Focus on those using OSS to run their
business.

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Thank you.
Michael Ducy
https://falco.org