Open Source Is Worth Defending
Open source software (OSS) is under attack — and not just from the usual suspects inserting malware or gaming vulnerability scanners.
Today, the definition of what it means to be “open source” is quietly eroding. Companies are rebranding “source-available” code as open source, creating downstream effects on the community and the broader ecosystem. When these lines blur, trust breaks — and open source doesn’t work without trust.
If we want open source to remain sustainable and impactful, we need to defend not just the code, but the principles that underpin it.
The Definition of Open Source Matters
The Open Source Initiative (OSI), a nonprofit that sets the foundation for the open source software ecosystem, did the hard work to define open source decades ago. It identified 10 criteria that include free redistribution, integrity of the author’s source code and no discrimination against persons and groups, among others. These criteria are the guarantees that allow companies to use OSS without calling their legal department every time a developer installs a package.
Trust in these principles has fueled innovation. It’s why open source makes up 90% of the code in the applications we use today. Every time we allow licenses that don’t meet the definition of open source to be treated as open source, those guarantees are no longer valid, slowing down the very innovation open source enables.
The Ripple Effect of Licensing Changes
The unfortunate truth is that these criteria don’t apply in every use case. We’ve seen vendors build traction with a truly open project. Then, worried about monetization or competition, they relicense it under a “source-available” model with restrictions, like “no commercial use” or “only if you’re not a competitor.”
But that’s not how open source works. Software today is deeply interconnected. Every project — no matter how small or isolated — relies on dependencies, which rely on other dependencies, all the way down the chain. A license that restricts one link in that chain can break the whole thing.
When developers start second-guessing whether they can use a library, innovation slows. Contributions dry up. Entire projects stop working. Security bugs don’t get fixed. Maintenance gets a lot harder. The network effects that make OSS magical start to unwind.
The healthiest open source projects thrive because competitors can collaborate on them. Look at Kubernetes and the Linux kernel. These projects are maintained by people and organizations who are often competitors. If license clauses had excluded any of them based on who they worked for or how their company made money, these projects would never have succeeded.
Forks Keep the Ecosystem Honest and Healthy
Forks are how the OSS community defends itself. When HashiCorp relicensed Terraform under the Business Source License (BSL) — blocking competitors from building on the tooling — the community launched OpenTofu, a fork under an OSI-approved license, backed by major contributors and vendors.
Redis’ transition away from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) to a proprietary license was a business decision. But it left a hole — and the community forked it. That fork became Valkey, a continuation of the project stewarded by the people and platforms who relied on it most. Today, Valkey is maintained by a neutral foundation, ensuring no one company can take it away from open source. Its community of users comes from every corner of the globe and overlaps into many other technical communities.
This is what healthy ecosystems do. Forks allow communities to take control and uphold values when projects change course. Most importantly, they’re how innovation continues.
Open Source Is Worth Defending
The open source brand took decades to build. It’s one of the most successful, trusted ideas in software history. But it’s only trustworthy because it means something.
Organizations can license their code however they want. But if they’re going to use the term “open source,” they should mean it. If not, they should call it something else — and own it.
The OSI can’t enforce its definition alone. It depends on the community to uphold it. If we want open source to thrive, we have to protect what makes it powerful: the licenses, the governance, the community and the shared understanding of what it means.
