DevOps Articles

What Being an Open Source Software Vendor Really Means

This article will explain the role, rights, duties and challenges of software vendors leading or supporting open source software projects. Conflict in major open source communities between software vendors, often the main sponsors behind the project, and other community members is common.

The truth is that open source software communities and projects often have one or more corporate, run-for-profit software vendor(s) among their members, and these companies are prime contributors and stakeholders. Yet, quite often a company willing to contribute to an open source software project gets it wrong, or is at least seen as a negative factor inside the community.

As such, the difficulty within every open source software project is that as it gathers contributors coming from various backgrounds, so it needs to define how each contributor’s interests align, business or otherwise.