Open source is everywhere. Building a business on top of it has never been harder.
The developer toolchain has fundamentally changed. What started as a few essential tools has become a modular, interconnected ecosystem of 10-15+ components; each solving a specific problem, each creating ongoing maintenance surface area. Open source won the distribution battle. The harder question now is what comes after.
The rules that governed the first generation of OSS businesses have changed immensely. Instant distribution and access is no longer the hard part, because AI workflows and models have made replication trivially fast, hyperscalers have learned to commoditize the primitive layer, and community trust in licensing, once assumed, now has to be earned before the first user adopts the project. The companies that built durable businesses in this environment figured this out before it became obvious.
We have tried to explore how the OSS landscape has evolved, what separated the projects that became infrastructure from those that became footnotes, and where we think the most interesting businesses will be built next.
We’d also love to hear your thoughts. If you’re building in this space or thinking about similar problems, please reach out to Taha Mubashir and/or Ayush Malhotra.