Non-DevTool Open Source Companies

I like to think of non-DevTool open source companies as the narwhals of the commercial open source ecosystem: It seems like they should be mythical creatures, but they absolutely exist, though you might have to scratch the surface to find them.

I wrote an article about non-DevTool open source companies for The New Stack, as part of my series on entrepreneurship for engineers. Check it out here.

I am fascinated by non-DevTool open source startups, actually. To make some generalizations, I find that they are usually more clear on why open source matters to their business, because they aren’t taking an open source approach because that’s what everyone else is doing (which you definitely see infrastructure-level companies doing). I also appreciate that they often have customers who really simply don’t give a damn about open source — which means they have to really nail their USP and communicate why open source should matter give their specific domain.

Anyway, check out the article. And for a super interesting open source company, check out Artefactual, the least-DevTool open source company I know about personally.