Open Source Because You Want To

I’ve said before that you shouldn’t build an open source company just because you like open source, or think open source companies are morally superior. Instead, you should have a concrete reason for building your open source project, and it should be clear how your open source project is contributing to your company’s vision, including its vision of being profitable. I’m not the only person who’s said this: I heard Guy Podjarny say (on a panel about revenue creation at State of Open Con) he won’t invest in founders whose reason for building an open source company is because they like open source.

I continue to think you should always have a clear idea of how your open source project contributes to your company’s revenue and profit growth. However… there’s also room for saying that you’re building an open source company because that’s the kind of company you want to build. There are a lot of decisions involved in building a company, and some have pros and cons. At the end of the day, you (and your co-founders) get to decide what kind of company you’re building. The only caveat is that you should hold it lightly enough that if your open source strategy is clearly hindering the company’s growth, you abandon it.

I see some parallels with remote work. Some founders build a remote-first company because that’s the type of company they want to build; it’s admittedly rarer, but there are other founders who purposely build an in-person team because that is how they personally prefer to work. There are advantages to both, but ultimately as a founder you get to decide what kind of company you want to build.

However, if you’ve decided the kind of company you want to build is an open source one, it’s your responsibility to make sure that open source project contributes to the bottom line. Building an open source project is a huge undertaking, and you will be splitting your entire team’s focus between the OSS and the commercial product. It is way too much of an investment to be a vanity project. Make sure that the open source project works for your company and contributes to both vision and profitability.