All Blog Posts
25 ❧ 2025-12-19 ❧ Despite some outliers, “open source” did not meaningfully exist as a concept before 1998.
24 ❧ 2025-12-09 ❧ The new product from 37signals is source-available, but there's no reason it couldn't be Fair Source.
23 ❧ 2025-05-01 ❧ Open Source is a gift that's greater than we realize. Truly accepting it could heal the world. That's the premise of my new show, Open Path, which launched today on Syntax.
22 ❧ 2025-02-27 ❧ Join the Open Source Initiative (OSI) before March 7. Watch your email for a link. Vote before March 17.
21 ❧ 2025-02-25 ❧ The OSI is not being arbitrary and capricious.
20 ❧ 2025-02-13 ❧ Mismatched expectations are bad for everyone, so it's in our collective best interest to clarify the Open Source social contract.
19 ❧ 2025-02-03 ❧ We may have just witnessed the end of the Republic, with the accession of Augustus Musk.
18 ❧ 2025-02-01 ❧ The concept of a 'fork' comes from Open Source software, and it means a schism.
17 ❧ 2024-12-20 ❧ More experiments please.
16 ❧ 2024-11-04 ❧ Ben Vinegar hired me into Sentry four years ago, and now he is moving on. Allow me a few words.
15 ❧ 2024-10-14 ❧ Open Source offers a check on power, yet some ways of wielding power are still better than others.
14 ❧ 2024-10-11 ❧ Matt Mullenweg and Dries Buytaert are showing us starkly contrasting ways of leading an Open Source community.
13 ❧ 2024-06-20 ❧ First there was Free Software, then Open Source. How did we get to Fair Source?
12 ❧ 2024-05-15 ❧ Self-hosted Sentry is a clear existence proof of the viability of the Fair Source model.
11 ❧ 2024-04-26 ❧ With new EU legislation, Open Source foundations are growing up fast. Where are we headed?
10 ❧ 2024-04-05 ❧ It was a great meal. Are we going to pay the tab?
9 ❧ 2024-04-04 ❧ Imagine an indie Open Source contingent thriving alongside our corporations and governments.
8 ❧ 2024-04-01 ❧ Fair Source is about licensing. Software Commons is about funding. Let's do both ... separately.
7 ❧ 2024-03-21 ❧ If a viable fork of Redis emerges, relicensing was a rug pull. If not, it wasn't ... and that's kinda sad.
6 ❧ 2024-03-05 ❧ Software Commons is a great name. But for what? It should be an institution.
5 ❧ 2024-02-22 ❧ The world is ready for something beyond Open Source. Is it Software Commons?
4 ❧ 2024-02-05 ❧ We can solve the OSS sustainability crisis for less than $1 billion, priced to cost.
3 ❧ 2024-01-25 ❧ The new HBS working paper seems fundamentally flawed to me, though it has some helpful parts.
2 ❧ 2024-01-19 ❧ What is Open Source sustainability? Fair pay, no hoops. Why is it in crisis? Burnout.
1 ❧ 2024-01-04 ❧ Open Path is a new blog by Chad Whitacre about Open Source, tech, and society.