The Virtuous Cycles of Commercial Open Source

Recent actions by for-profit companies have put the open source movement's resolve to the test. The dramatic license changes introduced by HashiCorp, Redis, and Elastic have been disheartening to witness. And even for those who might find car wrecks fascinating, there’s little hope or joy to be found in the turmoil unfolding within communities like WordPress.

Many of us feel the traditional open source values of transparency, collaboration, and trust are under assault.

Yet, at no time in history has the adoption and support for open source ever been greater. Open source is present in 96% of the world’s commercial codebases, and its unique approach to collaborative innovation remains as vital as ever. Yet, it's clear open source must evolve alongside commercial realities. Rather than see this evolution as a betrayal of open source principles, we should see it as its natural progression. By embracing both the wisdom of open source and the tools of commercialization, we can build something unprecedented: open source communities that are not just sustainable, but unstoppable.

Open Source has Distinct Paths of Growth

Open source projects are unique in that they grow stronger through self-reinforcing cycles where the community uses, improves and advocates for the software. These forces, when well orchestrated, can have compounding effects that advance the growth and innovation of projects to levels not possible with proprietary software.

A successful open source project depends on its ability to balance innovation with stability, growth with sustainability, and commercial interests with community values. By understanding and actively managing these dynamics, open source projects can continue to drive technological advancement while building resilient, inclusive communities that benefit public and commercial interests alike. Success requires ongoing commitment to transparency, clear governance, and active stakeholder engagement, supported by sustainable funding models and strong security practices.

None of it is Easy

While the open source model offers tremendous potential, it faces significant challenges that must be acknowledged and addressed. Recent studies indicate that maintainer burnout affects approximately 45% of major open source projects. This burnout often stems from increasing demands for support, feature requests, and bug fixes without corresponding growth in maintainer resources. Successful projects implement structured support systems, including mentorship programs and clear contribution guidelines, to distribute the maintenance burden more effectively.

Open source communities must also navigate complex relationships between individual contributors, corporate sponsors, and end users. Tensions often arise when commercial interests clash with community priorities. Successful projects like Kubernetes have developed sophisticated governance models that balance these competing interests through transparent decision-making processes and clear escalation paths for conflicts.

The distributed nature of open source also creates unique security vulnerabilities, but open source projects are effectively mitigating these challenges. Recent analysis shows that projects with formal security practices identify and patch vulnerabilities 60% faster than those without. Establishing security working groups, implementing automated testing, and maintaining responsible disclosure policies have become essential practices for mature open source projects.

The Open Source Success Ladder

The art of cultivating growth in open source communities lies in orchestrating four fundamental ingredients: usage, improvements, advocacy, and financial stability. When these elements align and reinforce each other effectively, they create powerful momentum that can sustain a project's growth and impact over the long term. Understanding how each component contributes to this virtuous cycle is essential for project maintainers and community leaders who aim to build lasting, valuable open source initiatives.

From the bottom of the ladder to the top:

Usage:

Building a Foundation of Adoption — Open source projects often begin with a small group of developers solving a specific problem. As the software becomes available to a broader audience, it attracts users who share similar needs. These users form the foundation of the community and provide critical feedback on the software’s functionality and usability. The accessibility of the software—free from licensing restrictions—encourages widespread adoption across diverse industries and use cases.

Similarly, researchers frequently release open source projects that emerge from their work. For instance, TensorFlow originated from research at Google Brain, while Apache Spark came from UC Berkeley's AMPLab. These projects often start as tools to support research papers and experiments, then gain adoption beyond academia as industry practitioners discover their utility.

Enterprises represent another major source of projects, with companies open-sourcing internal tools to benefit from community contributions and establish industry standards. React, developed and open-sourced by Facebook, exemplifies this approach, as does Kubernetes, which Google built as an open source version of their internal orchestration tooling, Borg. These enterprise-backed projects often begin with significant resources and mature codebases, accelerating their adoption and community growth.

Improvements:

Creating a Culture of Contribution — One of the defining features of open source communities is their participatory nature. Users are not just passive consumers; they can actively contribute by fixing bugs, adding features, or improving documentation. This collaborative model accelerates innovation and ensures that the software evolves to meet real-world needs. Some contributors are volunteers, driven by intrinsic motivations such as learning, reputation building, or addressing career growth. Many contributors are full-time employees of organizations that want to invest and evolve a technology on which they depend. Meritocracy and transparency are fundamental principles in open source communities, where contributors earn influence through valuable contributions. This fosters a sense of ownership and accountability among members. Continuous feedback from users and contributors helps refine the software, making it more robust and feature-rich over time.

Advocacy:

Expanding Reach — As users and contributors experience the benefits of open source software, many become advocates for its adoption. PostHog, an open core project, reported that 70% of their initial growth came from user recommendations. Advocacy manifests through promoting the software in blogs, forums, or social media, hosting events such as conferences or meetups to build awareness, and encouraging organizations to adopt or support open source solutions. Advocates help attract new users and contributors, creating a virtuous cycle where increased participation leads to further enhancements and broader adoption.

Financial Stability:

Ensuring Longevity — The perception of open source as “free” obscures the real costs of maintaining healthy projects. According to the 2023 Open Source Initiative survey, sustainable projects typically require diverse funding streams, including corporate sponsorships and community donations. These funding sources enable projects to support dedicated maintainers, cover infrastructure costs, and invest in community-building initiatives that strengthen the project's long-term viability

These elements of the open source ladder work together to create a self-reinforcing cycle where increased adoption brings more contributors, more contributions improve the software, and improved software attracts even more users. Over time, successful open source projects develop into ecosystems with interconnected tools, libraries, and applications. For example, projects like Linux, Kubernetes and PyTorch have grown into massive ecosystems supported by global communities.

The best open source projects demonstrate all four steps of the ladder working together to support development while maintaining community values. Take The Linux Foundation’s Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as an example. Through its graduated projects program, it cultivates broad usage across enterprises while ensuring technical excellence and longevity through rigorous requirements. Particular CNCF projects like Kubernetes showcase how corporate investment can align with community interests, as contributors from diverse organizations collaborate on improvements that benefit the entire ecosystem. The CNCF’s global events, training & certification programs, and educational initiatives like Humans of Cloud Native and Phippy & Friends drive advocacy and knowledge-sharing, while its neutral governance model helps balance commercial interests with community needs. By coordinating both financial backing and organizational support to critical cloud native technologies, the CNCF creates a sustainable environment where projects can mature without compromising their open source principles.

What Gets Measured Gets Done

As the line between open source and commercial software blurs, adopting commercial-style metrics can help open source projects compete more effectively in the market.

These metrics provide insights into user needs and market trends, enabling projects to evolve in ways that align with broader industry demands while maintaining their open source ethos. Data-driven transparency strengthens relationships between maintainers and stakeholders by aligning expectations and showcasing achievements.

Unfortunately, not everyone feels comfortable adding commercial-style metrics to an open source project.

Adopting Commercial-Style Metrics

There has always been an uneasy tension between commercial and community interests in open source projects. There are many in the open source community that are generally suspicious of commercial interests in open source.

This tension often means that open source projects are slow to adopt the kinds of product engagement and retention metrics commonly used in commercial projects. Many open source projects operate under the mistaken impression that commercial metrics will expose users to privacy violations or shift the focus of open source toward profit-driven objectives.

Incorporating commercial-style metrics into open source projects does not mean compromising community-driven principles; rather, it equips maintainers with tools to better understand their users, improve project health, and secure resources for long-term success. By balancing these metrics with privacy considerations and ethical data use, open source projects can thrive in an increasingly competitive software ecosystem.

For example, metrics that demonstrate adoption or impact can make a compelling case to sponsors, investors, or organizations considering financial or resource contributions to an open source project. It’s easier to secure investments when a project can show its relevance and value by pointing to a growing user base or high engagement levels.

Detailed usage data can also help maintainers prioritize features or bug fixes based on what users find most valuable. For example, Homebrew uses anonymous aggregate analytics to decide which features to prioritize based on how users interact with the software. This data-driven approach ensures that limited resources are allocated effectively.

The Role of Foundations

The growth and sustainability of open source projects is deeply tied to their communities, and these communities need rules and organizational boundaries to maintain the balance between commercial and community interests. Foundations like The Linux Foundation or Apache Foundation play a crucial role in properly stewarding open source projects. They are key to maintaining governance structures, funding infrastructure, and ensuring long-term viability. These organizations act as neutral bodies that balance the interests of contributors, vendors and adopters while fostering collaboration.

Through carefully structured governance models, foundations establish frameworks for decision-making that prevent any single entity from dominating project direction. They also provide essential services like legal support, trademark management, and security vulnerability coordination that individual maintainers often struggle to handle alone. By pooling resources from multiple stakeholders, foundations can fund critical but unsexy infrastructure work that might otherwise go neglected. They also serve as powerful advocates for open source interests in broader technology policy discussions, helping shape legislation and standards that affect the entire ecosystem. Perhaps most importantly, foundations create stable platforms for commercial collaboration around open source projects, enabling competing companies to cooperate on shared technology while maintaining their market differentiation. This delicate balance of cooperation and competition has proven essential for the long-term sustainability of major open source initiatives.

Finding the Right Balance

Open source thrives when communities find the right balance. Some projects will remain community-funded passion projects, others will grow into commercially-backed foundations, and many will find paths in between. The supposed paradox between commercialization and open source principles dissolves when we recognize that commercial success can amplify rather than diminish open source values. May projects, like OpenSearch, PyTorch and Kubernetes, show how corporate investment can enhance community participation and accelerate innovation while maintaining transparency and collaboration. Rather than "selling out," strategic commercialization provides the infrastructure for open source projects to scale their impact.