1) Several open source companies backed by venture capital have changed their licenses recently to exclude cloud providers like AWS, in an attempt to generate more revenue. 2) However, this goes against the principles of open source and risks making the software proprietary. It also excludes an important type of competition. 3) Both open source companies and cloud providers need to find business models that respect open source values while ensuring financial viability, such as through partnerships, paid support/modules, and contributing more code. Governments can also support open source through funding and procurement policies.

1. The End of Open Source ?
What's going on between VC-backed
Open Source companies and cloud
providers ?
Ludovic Dubost, XWiki SAS

2. Who am I
Creator of XWiki & running XWiki SAS
Working on Collaboration Software (XWiki & CryptPad)
Open Source Contributor & Promoter
Working full time on Open Source for 15 years

3. Events
February 2018: Elastic Search Licence used in OSS
repositories
August 2018: Redis Common Clause
December 2018: Confluent Community License
February 2019: Redis Source Available License
April 2019: Google Cloud announces partnership with OSS
companies
They all target AWS

4. What Creators & VCs hoped for

5. What Creators & VCs hoped for
Creator starts an OSS project (alone, with friends, with help
of his company)
Community loves the project and starts using it like crazy
Creator creates a company and VCs invest
The company continues to build up brand and software
Community continues to help the spreading
The company starts selling: support, pro versions,
extensions
Company makes a lot of money
Everybody is happy

6. Side-note
Creator hoped that there would still be a lot of investment in
the Open Source code and the Community
VCs did not really care
Community and Company are not talking as much anymore

7. What really happened
Selling support/pro versions/support did not bring back the
expected return from VCs
Alternative competition hosting the "free version" at low cost
emerged, not participating to the Open Source product
VC Backed company pushed more of the investment
towards "proprietary" components
Community and company are separating more and more
Results are still not enough for VC backed company
VC backed company blames it on the cloud or on companies
that are not paying
VC backed company changes licence

8. OSS companies are the bad guys ?
The new licences are not Open Source
BUT
They are still major contributors of Open Source Software

9. Cloud companies are the bad guys ?
They just use what they are allowed to use
BUT
They do not contribute or help the software they use
Stale-mate

10. What is the problem with the new
licences ?
By excluding Cloud providers, the initial developer also
excludes competition
What will be the limit to the exclusions as the company
wants to make more money
Open Core already existed to do that

11. What do we learn from this ?
Either
Open Source is not compatible with VCs financial objectives
VCs and creators are using this as an excuse to go more
"proprietary"
Open Source is too much used as a "freemium" strategy, not
for Open Source itself
Businesses (Clients, Cloud providers, even OSS Companies)
do not care enough about Open Source

12. What do we learn from this ?
There is a real problem
Who pays for Open Source code ?
The share of Open Source money in the industry (1-10B$
versus 300B$)
The prisoner's dilema, but it's not new

13. What is the future
We are again in a fight for standards & openness
Cloud & SAAS needs to be factored in the business model of
OSS companies
There is a big risk of Open-Source washing
Free Software Community needs new methods of funding,
especially for the last mile

14. The End of Open Source ?

15. FOSS is still very important
Only Open-Source gives us independence (as users & as
countries)
Open Source allows more open competition vs winner takes
all
Open Source is still the best strategy for Europe & for the
Public Sector

16. Is Open Source dead ?
Developers still love Open Source
There is still more and more Open Source code
Cloud & SAAS providers do contribute to OSS but at a lower
rate
Lower returns business model still work, and it can be good
news for them
When you have the AWS problem this actually means things
go quite well
Answer: No !

17. What can OSS businesses do ?
Keep an edge
strong licences can give an edge to OSS (AGPL)
paying modules (Can still be OSS)
do not be shy of making customers pay
Have a Cloud strategy
Partner with Cloud Providers (OVH ?)
BUT

18. What can OSS businesses do ?
BUT
Respect OSS principles:
be transparent
separate OSS from non OSS
accept competition when the software becomes popular

19. What should Cloud companies do ?
Use Open-Source everywhere
Be Open-Cloud
BUT
Significantly contribute to them
and/or Partner with OSS Business (before they turn
proprietary)

20. What can government do ?
Favor Open Source for government buying
Enforce standards and openness & fight non competitive
practices
Launch a European Open Source Industrial Strategy
Finance Open Source projects that are useful for users,
enterprises & small cloud providers
Target core services that are not published as Open source

21. What can government do ?

22. What can users & companies do ?
Value the level of Open Source code, not the level of
freemium code
Value Open-Cloud strategies not proprietary cloud strategies
Require standards and open source
Require transparency from Businesses
Users cannot expect everything will be free