The Life and Death of Open Source Companies

The author, a Sentry employee, argues that building a truly Open Source company is hard, and that licenses like Sentry's FSL, which includes a two-year commercial non-compete before converting to MIT or Apache 2, are a viable alternative. The post uses the Bambu Lab A1 printer as an example: Bambu Studio is built on the AGPL-licensed PrusaSlicer and SuperSlicer, while Bambu's firmware and hardware designs are not open source. The author says Prusa's founder, Josef Průša, has written that Prusa is reconsidering its open-source approach, and the author calls the situation a risk for Open Source hardware companies. The author also argues that an end user has less risk from an Open Source licence if the company goes out of business.