Open Source, Open Mind: The Cost of Free Software - Dylan Beattie - NDC Oslo 2024

Software freedom has historically been defined in two ways: “free as in beer” (no cost) and “free as in speech” (freedom to modify and redistribute)

The GNU General Public License (GPL) was created to ensure software freedom by requiring source code distribution and maintaining freedoms for derivative works

Many successful open source projects face sustainability challenges when maintainers burn out or struggle to fund ongoing development

Recent trend of previously free/open source projects switching to paid models (Redis, HashiCorp, Unity) due to economic pressures and cloud providers profiting from free software

Package management systems like NuGet handle billions of downloads, yet maintainers of critical packages often work unpaid in their spare time

Cloud computing changed the economics of software by making it convenient to consume without owning, similar to how Spotify changed music consumption

Companies often struggle to justify paying for open source software they already get for free, even when they heavily depend on it

Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) often transfer copyright ownership from individual contributors to organizations, limiting their future control

Permissive licenses like MIT allow more commercial usage but provide fewer guarantees of ongoing freedom compared to copyleft licenses

The sustainability challenge: balancing free access and adoption with the need to fund ongoing maintenance and development of critical open source infrastructure