Well said, Subomi. I’d like to see more open source companies be public about how they think about open source as a strategic decision (admittedly, I could do better about this myself).
I think Vercel / Next.js and Automattic / Wordpress are great examples of aligning value to the business while also creating (and not capturing) a bunch of value to users of the open source project. As a result of leaving some value on the table for users, both projects have a thriving plugin/extension community that wouldn't exist if they were closed-source or confined to a single vendor. Likewise, I'm more likely to start a Next.js project knowing that I can host it anywhere, even though my default is to use Vercel.
Paul, please write the article. I *want* to read it.
Hard agree. It's why I also believe that more & more companies will be more strategic with their licensing choice from the beginning. The common wisdom is to give it all away and grow at all costs, then switch licenses when there's brand value and the business needs revenue. This is poor because the license changes aren't bad in themselves because they still enable the individual developer to take enormous benefits, but they come with significant disadvantages like community drama, bad pr etc.
I think Vercel / Next.js and Automattic / Wordpress are great examples of aligning value to the business while also creating (and not capturing) a bunch of value to users of the open source project. As a result of leaving some value on the table for users, both projects have a thriving plugin/extension community that wouldn't exist if they were closed-source or confined to a single vendor. Likewise, I'm more likely to start a Next.js project knowing that I can host it anywhere, even though my default is to use Vercel.