More than a decade ago, my team and I at Olliance Group, my boutique open source strategy consulting firm, spent days deep in the boardrooms of major VCs, OEMs, ISVs, and venture-backed startups, helping them navigate what felt like uncharted waters at the time: open source. The success of Red Hat drove every venture capitalist to want to have an open-source company in their portfolio or convince one of their existing companies to “go open source,” rightly or wrongly. And, the major tech companies were trying to determine whether open source posed an existential threat or a competitive advantage.

It was an exciting time for our small firm, as we had the opportunity to shape the business evolution of open source through the technology ecosystem by working with companies such as Intel, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Sun, Nokia, Motorola, and more than 20 startups and venture capital firms. We also had a few particularly interesting outlier clients, including Fox Racing, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and the US Navy. I’ll never forget what the Department of the Navy CIO (“the DON,” as he liked being called) said to me at the start of our project, “I know you work with important tech companies, but if we screw up, people die!” That helped keep things in perspective.

I recall a mentor once sharing with me the secret to his consulting success: “You only need to be one day ahead of your client to add value.” Our team would spend hours around our plush conference room table (my dining room table) in heated debate over what an open-source business strategy would actually entail. Then we would head to the client to deliver a critical presentation. In those formative days of commercial open source, sometimes we were happy to be hours ahead of our clients.

Back then, the questions were foundational:
“Should they open-source part of our stack?”
“How do they monetize it if they give away the code?”
“What kind of license, governance, and community structure makes sense for them?”

It was a transformative era. Forward-thinking organizations realized that open source wasn’t just a licensing decision — it was a strategy. A way to accelerate adoption, reduce costs, attract developers, and build ecosystems that extended far beyond their balance sheets. We helped companies turn that strategy into a competitive advantage.

Now, in 2025, it’s happening again. The names have changed. The domain has shifted. But the pattern is unmistakably familiar.

The AI/Open Source Convergence Is No Longer Optional

The AI landscape today resembles the early days of open source. We’re witnessing the same arc:

• Early dominance by closed, proprietary incumbents.
• Frustration with opaque models and gatekept access.
• The rise of community-driven alternatives built in the open.

Hugging Face, Mistral, Deepseek, and Meta’s LLaMA models are just the tip of the spear. Community participation and openness are no longer experimental — they’re expectations. Developers want transparency. Enterprises want portability. Governments want accountability. And the best talent wants to build in the open.

Open source is once again becoming the default.

And just like before, the players who get there early — who build smart, intentional strategies for openness — will shape the ecosystem. Everyone else will play catch-up.

A Strategic Inflection Point for Builders, Large and Small

For OEMs and ISVs, the stakes are high. AI is not just a feature — it’s the new platform layer. If you’re not part of the developer workflows, data pipelines, tooling ecosystem, and model integrations that define this layer, you risk being disintermediated.

Open source is your way back in.

For venture capitalists, portfolio companies face pressure to ship products faster, scale operations more efficiently, and differentiate themselves in a crowded market. Community-driven adoption and developer engagement aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re the most defensible moat you can build.

Just like 15 years ago, companies need to answer the same questions to craft their AI open source strategies:

• What to open source — and what not to
• How to structure contribution models and licensing
• How to balance openness with commercialization
• How to build communities, not just codebases
• How to use open source as an accelerant for GTM, recruiting, and M&A

A Full-Circle Moment — And a Call to Action

What’s striking — and gratifying — is that we’re coming full circle. The same strategic levers that defined success in the early days of open source are resurfacing, now amplified by the speed and scale of AI and the accelerated adoption in the enterprise. During all previous foundational technology shifts, the enterprise waited 2–3 years before adopting at scale. This is not the case with AI.

If you’re an OEM, an ISV, or a VC, ask yourself:
Do you have a strategy for how open source will shape your AI roadmap? Or are you leaving it to chance — and watching others define the standards you’ll have to follow?

We’ve been here before. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned:
Those who treat open source as a core business strategy — rather than an afterthought — don’t just survive inflection points. They lead them.