On August 10th, 2023, Hashicorp changed its license for Terraform to a non-open source license. The community was up in arms, a manifesto was written, and a little over a month later OpenTofu supported by the Linux Foundation was launched. On March 20, 2024, Redis announced it was adopting a new license terminating its status as an open source database. On March 28, 2024, the community again assembled behind the protective shield of The Linux Foundation and Valkey was formed. These are two examples of the power of the open source community to activate its ‘avengers’ to save countless corporations and open source development.

With open source seemingly under attack how do we protect ourselves from licensing changes? How do we as a community choose to stick with a product that’s changed its license or take a chance on an open source edition? This talk will discuss methods to help gain awareness, contributors, adoption and successfully build an open source project’s community from the perspective of seasoned community collaborators and tech evangelists.