Here is my list of the top developments in open source licensing in 2018.
- Huge business exits. Red Hat, GITHUB, Elastic, Mulesoft,
Magento, Pivotal and Heptio all had big financial wins this year, proving the viability of open source businesses. - Microsoft joined OIN. Microsoft joined the open source community and agreed to limit patent aggression.
- GPL Cure Commitment. Many companies hopped on the GPL cure commitment bandwagon, in the effort led by Red Hat.
- Licensing paradigm shifts. Redis, Elastic, Confluent, MongoDB, and other businesses adjusted their business and licensing models, largely in reaction to the explosion in cloud based services using their software.
- OSS Capital! Obviously I am not neutral about this one, but a venture fund targeted to open source developers is off to a roaring start.
Thanks to everyone who read, reposted, re-tweeted and commented on my blog this year. Have a happy (and free and open) new year!