Being Open Source instead of just Open-Sourcing or Open Source is not just about the license

Open Source is not just about available sources or certain licenses. Successful Open Source projects have a community that matters, not just users, strong leaders that listen and still communicate their vision and goal, growing base of contributors who don’t want to be ignored, even if there’s a benevolent dictator as project lead.

There are some popular Open Source projects which recently failed in some of these areas and got forked. Synyx decided to go with the forks even though we are mainly users and in these cases not main contributors. What’s the reason behind these decisions? Our company vision tells us to live Open Source which includes much more than what it looks on its surface. It’s not a goal in itself. We believe openness, communication and trancparency are key to quality software, especially long term. That leads to more deliverable value and improved competitiveness as well as more transparency to the community behind.