Saving Open Source

Open source software is everywhere—from large enterprises to small businesses, from smartphones to airplanes. It pervades software development and infrastructure. We fought for open source to be accepted, and we won. Now that it has a seat at the table and the managers, board members, and investors have their hands on it, has it lost its soul? Has open source gone corporate?

Furthermore, with a generation of developers who grew up in a post-Napster world that views all knowledge and content on the Internet as free, we're seeing many public software projects forego the concept of OSS licenses in favor of looser forms of sharing. How did we get here, and does this mean we've entered a post-open source era?

Let's look back to the beginnings of the free software movement to discover what made it a movement and not a corporate strategy. We'll consider whether open source has exchanged its jeans and t-shirt in favor of khakis and blue, button-up shirt. More importantly, we'll examine whether this is a greater cultural phenomenon and what it means for the future of software development and whether open source needs saving.

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