Commercial Gains Mean Growing Pains for Open Source Community

Recent conversations at OSCON, which I've attended since 2004, as well as observations through talks with vendors, users and developers in open source all indicate a common theme: With commercial successes for open source software come some community growing pains. This was also illustrated to some extent by the attendance, content and vibe at this year's OSCON, a good annual check on where commercial open source software stands in its ongoing maturation, evolution and disruption.

There was a much more business-like, commercial feel to OSCON this year, and I heard more than a few times that the technical content was a bit less technical or substantial. There were generally fewer sandals and more suits, basically, which reflects the continuing business, investment and innovative opportunities that accompany open source software in enterprise IT.