In this episode of Dirk & Swap: Conversations on Open Source, we debated a topic that is important for the growth and sustainability of the project – commercialization of Open Source. Here are some of the topics we covered in this discussion:

• While commercializing an open-source project does contribute to its sustainability, does it matter who commercializes it. Git and Linux are great examples of third parties like Github, Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical, etc. commercializing the projects created by Linus Torvalds while he still focuses on the development side of the project. Is that wrong if a third party tries to commercialize a project?
• Should we be skeptical of, or worry about, large corporations like Microsoft when they start commercializing open-source projects? Let’s dispel some myths.
• That said there are still cases where companies simply leech from open-source projects without giving anything back.
• We also talked about Open-Source vs Commercial Open Source or what many call Open Core Software. Is it really Open Source, if it’s NOT fully Open Source?