February 11, 2026
Open-source or open-sore?
Should your developer company go open source?
Strategy talk meets comment chaos: “bad business?”, “VCs vs customers,” and license drama
TLDR: The article argues open‑source should be a strategic choice—best when users also build the product. Comments exploded: some call open‑source bad business, others say adoption beats monetization, and one sparks trust drama by alleging a license “rugpull,” while a few propose a hybrid open‑core approach.
Founders got a spicy think piece today: Extreme Foundership says going open‑source isn’t a “growth hack,” it’s a strategy call. The framework is simple: know your users, and ask if your users are also your contributors. If they are, you’ve got a federation (community builds with you). If not, it’s a stadium (a small team builds while everyone else watches). Clear, right? The comments immediately turned it into a boxing ring.
Skeptics like iberator demanded receipts: where’s the proof open‑source companies actually make money? Others, like spacebanana7, went full pragmatist: adoption first, cash later—just be ready to “choose between screwing over your VCs or your customers.” Then came the plot twist: a drive‑by from CactusBlue alleging Airbyte “rugpulled” its license to ELv2—translation for non‑nerds: a more restrictive license, a.k.a. “we’re open… until we’re not.” Trust issues unlocked.
Amid the brawling, one builder (kaicianflone) dropped a middle‑path: keep the single‑user command‑line tool open, but put team features and hosted stuff behind a wall. In other words: free for tinkering, paid for scaling. Meanwhile, a jokey chorus revived the oldest meme in tech: “open‑source is not a business model,” while a grumpy figmert wished someone would “ban AI slop.”
Verdict from the crowd: open‑source is a power move if your users double as contributors. Otherwise, it’s a fan club with a pricey support inbox—and the license drama can turn fans into pitchforks fast.
Key Points
- •Open source should be treated as a strategic, architectural decision—not a distribution hack.
- •Founders must show how OSS directly drives adoption, defensibility, lower CAC friction, or monetization for their product.
- •Technical users value OSS for trust, control, extensibility, and learning; non-technical buyers value it for risk reduction and auditability.
- •The “federation test” asks whether users are also contributors; alignment drives compounding community value.
- •Federation OSS yields network effects and standardization, while stadium OSS relies on a core team and lacks inherent network effects.