COSS For An Open Future In this post I’ll cover my formative career learnings that led to what I’ve dedicated my life’s work to, hopefully for decades to come. Early Days and
Research COSS VC Funding This is a public spreadsheet that tracks, by year, VC funding for Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) startups, including information like amount invested, lead investor, etc. To contribute additions, subtractions
Research YC COSS Startups This is a public spreadsheet that tracks all Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) startups that have gone through Y Combinator. To contribute additions, subtractions or editions to this public spreadsheet,
Research COSS Index: $100m+ Club This is the Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) Index $100 million+ revenue club, aka COSSI. It is a public spreadsheet that tracks all COSS companies that have reached $100 million
Creator Series Open Source Creator Series, Part 7: Deriving Commercial Product from Open Source Project This is Part 7 of our Open Source Creator Series on “Deriving Commercial Product from Open Source Project" to help you – the open source technology creators – understand and bootstrap some
Creator Series Open Source Creator Series, Part 6: How to Measure Community Building This is Part 6 of our Open Source Creator Series on “How to Measure Community Building" to help you – the open source technology creators – understand and bootstrap some of the
Creator Series Open Source Creator Series, Part 5: Understanding "Distribution" in Open Source Licensing This is Part 5 of our Open Source Creator Series on "Understanding ‘Distribution’ in Open Source Licensing" to help you – the open source technology creators – understand and bootstrap some of
Creator Series Open Source Creator Series, Part 4: Documentation and Technical Writing 101 A project’s documentation gets the most amount of traffic, by far. It’s the place where people decide whether to continue learning about your project or move on.
Creator Series Open Source Creator Series, Part 3: How to Choose an Open Source License This is Part 3 of our Open Source Creator Series on "How to Choose an Open Source License" to help you – the open source technology creators – understand and bootstrap some
Creator Series Open Source Creator Series, Part 2: Product Marketing Having the word “marketing” here is in fact misleading. It’s about product education. Your role is akin to a coach, mentor, or a teaching assistant in a computer science class or a coding bootcamp -- not a “marketing person.”
Creator Series Open Source Creator Series, Part 1: Licensing Fundamentals At any given moment, thousands of developers around the world are creating new open source software – to solve a problem that has no good existing solution or to scratch a
Resources Open Source Culture Company Handbooks This is a reference list of company handbooks who are building an open source company culture. This list is inspired by a recent conversation between DROdio (CEO at Armory) and
Building Company Open Source Culture DROdio (CEO at Armory) and Kate MacAleavey (Head of Culture and Leadership Development at Armory) recently had a fascinating discussion on YouTube with Joseph Jacks about "open source culture", in
Resources Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) Glossary Today, we are releasing the first version of COSS Glossary, a set of definitions of commonly used terms in the open source technology world. The motivation behind this document is
Building Company Good and not Evil: the Advent of Ethos Licensing This post was first published on the blog, Copyleft Currents. For years, my clients have asked me what to do about the “Good not Evil” license, which is most famously
Building Company Lessons in Managing a Distributed Team Building a 100% distributed, or remote first, workforce is becoming more popular for tech companies. Some notable ones are: GitLab, Basecamp, Hashicorp, Automattic, and DEV. (If I missed any, please
Announcement What is COSS Media? COSS Media is a new learning platform that delivers actionable knowledge to help Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) founders build lasting companies.
Fostering Community Five Decades of Permissionless Software Innovation Movements Why Commercial Open-Source Software (“COSS”) represents the next major transformational permissionless software movement?
Doing Business PolyForm and Open Core Although PolyForm licenses have many uses, one important driver of the value for PolyForm licenses is the Open Core licensing model.
Doing Business Investing in the Red Zone: Commercial Open Source and Bear Markets When markets are on an upward trajectory, investing is not so hard. After all, the stock market always goes up over the long term. But it takes more work to identify good investments during down markets. Fortunately, COSS businesses can be a great investment during bad times.
Doing Business COSS Company Value Creation and Capture Fundamentals This post defines the distinctions of value creation and value capture between closed-source and open-source software companies.
Developing Product COSS Will Eat $500+ Billion Of SaaS Over ~20 Years This post predicts that Commercial Open Source Software (COSS) companies will eat SaaS over the next 20 years.
Developing Product OSS Will Eat Cloud Computing Open source software will eat cloud computing. Read this post to find out how this trend will play out.
Developing Product What does the shift to multi-cloud-OSS-aaS mean for COSS companies/founders? What are the implications for COSS companies as the world moves to multi-cloud? This post explores this topic.
Fostering Community Creating OSS Value != Capturing OSS Value This post explains the main differences between value creation and value capture in the open source context.
