Tools: Latest Should Your Developer Company Go Open Source? 2026

I’ve been asked a few times about my approach to open-source in the past few weeks, so decided to write this article to structure my thoughts.

Most founders get the open-source decision backwards. They start with “open-source is great for distribution” and work backwards to justify it.

a “community” Slack that is actually a support queue,

and a monetization strategy that competes with your own free tier.

Open-source is not a distribution hack. It is an architectural decision about your product, your business model, and your execution bar.

After building Airbyte into a large open-source data infrastructure company, I’ve been asked dozens of times: Should we go open-source?

Here is the framework I use to answer that question.

“Developers love open-source.” “Open always wins.” “Proprietary is dead.”

None of these are useful statements. The only question that matters is this: Does open-source structurally help this product win?

If you cannot explain how OSS compounds one of those for your specific product, you are not making a strategic choice. You are following vibes.

Source: HackerNews