Wow! It is great to see another low code, open source platform being launched. I’ve been involved with open source for over 25 years, and I am a big believer in the power of open source to accelerate development and empower people all over the world to build amazing things. I have built a career on OSS, and millions of others have as well. It is a game changer.

In full transparency, I am the Head of DevRel at Appsmith, which is an alternative tool to Open Blocks, and a source for some of Open Block’s code (https://github.com/openblocks-dev/openblocks/search?q=appsmi...).

However, that is not really what I want to discuss here.

As long as I have been involved in open source, I have dealt with FUD about OSS from investors, executives, and business people who don’t “get it”. These folks have usually been highly resistant to open sourcing code or making contributions because they think it will hurt the business. “Why would I want to share code that can be used to compete against us?” This could even apply to a young engineer or maintainer of a growing open-source project who’s deciding to startup and thinking whether to build an OSS company.

We have seen a huge boom in open source business models, and this is a GREAT thing. But, what can we do to ensure that we don’t prove the naysayers right?

My concern is that as we see a rise in competition among open source businesses, we will also see a rise in competitive businesses (open source and proprietary) that use previous work to accelerate their advantage… which is one of the central features to open source.

But, in theory, open source also has advantages for those who provide code - attribution, contribution, funding, shared resources, etc. There are also different licensing models that have strengths and weaknesses. We decided to go with a permissive license so that people can use Appsmith in all environments, and sometimes this works against us because competitors can build on top of Appsmith. But hey, that’s the nature of the game right?

So - what can we or should we do as a community to ensure that open source business models can be successful without tarnishing the reputation of open source in general? Should we be more clear with attribution? Should we partner and make shared libraries for common functionality? Maybe do nothing? What do you think?