Business trends are making software more expensive and moving ownership away from the customer. Companies are providing their software as a service, which involves recurring payments and access that is lost once a user stops paying. In parallel, the quality of open source software gone up dramatically.

As a result, the presence of open source software in the realm of for-profit enterprises has skyrocketed. Take, for example, ESLint. ESLint is the go to JS linting tool, and is used in combination with pre-commit by virtually every company, team, and/or project working with JavaScript. It is invaluable to the code maintainance of certain repositories.

So, do they just take the free software and move on with their days to generate exorbitant profits? Not always. Thankfully, many companies realize the value open source projects and developers provide them. So they give back. ESLint’s sponsors, as of today, notable include Vite, SAP, Icons8, Discord, Netlify, and 1Password. Companies and organizations also give back via non-monetary contributions. If a team needs a feature implemented or a bug fixed quickly, they oftentimes have the resources to do it themselves and submit a PR for it.

Open source software adoption in the commercial space can be a catalyst for development of tools which can benefit everyone. One perspective, adopted by many manufacturers in the automotive industry, is to cross collaborate on certain things so that they all have the foundations to build separately and focus on differentiating themselves. Automotive Grade Linux is a perfect example of that, with leaders like Mazda, Toyota, and Honda backing it. This [hopefully] helps to ensure that the software inside the cars we drive is safer, because if more companies rely on the same tools, you would expect them to ensure that their tools are good. Additionally, it allows car manufacturers to focus on doing what they do best, actually manufacturing cars.

I am hopeful for wide-spread adoption of open source software, both in commercial and non-commercial spaces, and I believe that it would bring very benificial changes.