State of Open Con 2025

Open source companies have to be able to compete both against their own open source project as well as with pure proprietary solutions in order to succeed. They also have to make their open source project into a competitive advantage, when if managed incorrectly it can instead be a massive risk. Emily Omier will talk about how open source companies need to think about their positioning in the ecosystem, their ideal users and ideal customers, and the relationship between their open source software, their commercial product and the business outcomes project and product are supposed to deliver if they want to succeed. Attendees will leave with a framework for creating a strategy to win, even in a cutthroat software market, with concrete examples of how successful open source companies have won in their markets.

Many open source creators, consumers, and participants are concerned with the general state of open source sustainability. But is this something we can quantify outside of our feelings or targeted examples? Perhaps if we can identify and calculate metrics that characterize and quantify this concern, we can collectively work to address this issue. In this talk, we will explore and interpret available data, identify gaps in knowledge, and discuss opportunities to work together to improve open source sustainability.

Corporations co-evolved with the global market economy, but Open Source is a gift economy. How might we continue evolving our corporations to participate more fully in Open Source?