Oskar Dudycz’s Architecture Weekly essay asks whether doing open source still makes sense and argues there are only three reasons to take it on: getting money out of it, using it in your own work, or enjoying it, ideally combining the last with one of the first two. He writes that financial success stories for individual maintainers are rare, that generative AI has further eroded the respect and credit contributors receive, and that large companies stand on the shoulders of a small group of unpaid maintainers while assuming someone else is funding them. His advice is to assess whether a project has commercial potential, can become a product and has willing payers, and if so to productize it or make the source available to customers first, and he frames sponsoring dependencies as due diligence rather than gratitude.
Open Source, a relic, a charity or still the thing?
Oskar Dudycz's Architecture Weekly essay asks whether doing open source still makes sense and argues there are only three reasons to take it on: getting money out of it, using it in your own work, or enjoying it, ideally combining the last with one of the first two. He writes that financial success stories for individual maintainers are rare, that generative AI has further eroded the respect and credit contributors receive, and that large companies stand on the shoulders of a small group of unpaid maintainers while assuming someone else is funding them. His advice is to assess whether a project has commercial potential, can become a product and has willing payers, and if so to productize it or make the source available to customers first, and he frames sponsoring dependencies as due diligence rather than gratitude.
Source: Architecture Weekly