Abstract

In the age of commoditization, hyper-cloud service wrapping, and increased competition in the open-source world, many Commerical Open Source (COSS) companies are struggling to find a sustainable business model. Balancing support of open-source with the need to maintain the business that provides that support can cause companies to make rash decisions about licensing and their business models.

In this talk, we’ll take a look at the commercial open-source landscape. We will learn from those who have been successful in building sustainable open-source communities and businesses. We will explore the various business models available to open source-based companies and where there have been successes and failures. We will use the case study of GitLab, a complete DevOps platform that is open core and based on git. The company has grown 177% year over year, even with the growing uncertainty in the space.