Realistic pros and cons of working with foundations with Mike Milinkovich

The Business of Open Source

This week on The Business of Open Source I spoke with Mike Milinkovich, executive director at the Eclipse Foundation. We had a wide-ranging conversation about the role of open source foundations in the open source ecosystem, especially as related to open source businesses.

The existence of open source foundations, and how companies decide to engage (or not) with them, is one of the aspects of open source businesses that is truly unique. Perhaps one of the key things to keep in mind from this conversation is that a foundation’s priority is project sustainability — and that is not always aligned with the goal of increasing profits for a company. On the other hand, there are a lot of advantages to contributing a project to a foundation. But founders should be aware of both the advantages and the constraints that working with a foundation entails.

Here are some of the things that stood out from our conversation:

• Investors want a successful business more than they want a successful project; foundations’ priorities are opposite.
• You have to take into account commercial/financial interests if you’re thinking about sustainability of a project, because you have to put food on the table; projects take time to maintain.
• The only community you get around an open source project is the one you build — contributing a project to a foundation is not a magic community pill, and building a community takes work.
• Running a foundation is not free, so if you’re going to contribute a project to a foundation seriously consider supporting that foundation financially.
• Your customers should also become sponsors or members of the foundation(s) that your project(s) are hosted under, and you should actively encourage them to do so.

Listen to the entire episode for even more insights!