By Franz Schubert, VP of Revenue at Giant Swarm

Open source software has become ubiquitous in today's technology landscape, powering everything from web servers to cloud infrastructure. While developers have long been champions of open source, its role within many companies often remains limited to a tool introduced and used by development teams. However, as open source increasingly underpins mission-critical applications, it's time to reimagine its role and actively push for a solid financial foundation and strategic adoption across the organization.

From Tactical Approach to Strategic Asset

While developers continue to grow the open source footprint in 95% of companies, according to the State of Open Source report, C-level executives paint a different picture. This disconnect leads to teams struggling to keep environments safe, updated, and patched, as well as facing challenges in obtaining support or building open source skills and experience. Open source represents a significant risk, considering how vital the technology is for most companies and how little attention is given to supporting maintainers or sufficiently staffing teams with internal or external resources capable of contributing to open source projects. Open source needs to move from a cost-cutting tactic to a strategic asset. Here is how:

Building a Culture of Open Source

Embracing open source is about adopting a mindset that fosters innovation, collaboration, and long-term sustainability. But there is no one-size-fits-all open source culture. Each company must shape its own approach based on its goals, resources, and engagement level with the open source ecosystem.

The first step? Define your strategy. Are you looking to accelerate your business model, enhance your brand, or attract top talent? If so, you may want to build internal resources and invest in open source contributions as part of your core business.

Alternatively, if you are primarily using open source projects to run infrastructure or streamline workflows, it might make more sense to engage external experts - people or companies who are already active in the community and can contribute efficiently across multiple customers and projects without stretching your own team too thin. You might also choose both approaches for different areas.

The second step? Build strategic support. Establish clear ownership across the organization to drive open source initiatives effectively. Ensure your financial investment aligns with the value your company derives from open source technology. Lastly, implement transparent reporting and communication to track progress, highlight contributions, and recognize the individuals and teams making an impact.

What Is the Business Case?

While companies that directly monetize open source activities can easily build a financial model around them, the situation is different for infrastructure projects - where value is less immediately tangible. Let's take platform engineering as a prime example. Most companies developing containerized software run Kubernetes somewhere in their organization - often in multiple environments. Initially, teams start small, following best practices recommended by industry analysts like Gartner. However, as workloads scale, infrastructure complexity increases, demanding more time and effort from developers who were originally hired to drive innovation, not manage operations.

At a certain point, forward-thinking managers recognize the need for a dedicated platform team to provide centralized services that enhance quality, reduce costs, and standardize operations across the organization. Yet, underfunding these teams sets them up for failure. Common challenges include:

• Overloaded teams struggling with updates, maintenance, and scaling.
• Missed opportunities to standardize environments for better security, efficiency, and troubleshooting.
• Lack of collaboration with development teams to optimize deployment strategies, observability, and resource efficiency.

A well-supported platform engineering team does not just maintain infrastructure; it empowers developers to ship software faster, troubleshoot issues efficiently, and optimize cloud resources - ultimately lowering costs. The value generated for the company by improving developer productivity, reliability, and operational efficiency far outweighs the investment in internal expertise and open source support by an external provider.

So, What Is in It for the Community?

By working with multiple companies, external consultants and specialized firms can justify deep collaboration with open source maintainers on individual projects-something that is often economically unfeasible for in-house teams treating open source as a side project. This structured engagement creates a foundation for meaningful contributions, thorough testing, high-quality documentation, and direct support for maintainers and their innovations. Ultimately, a strategic approach benefits both the company and the open source ecosystem, ensuring long-term sustainability and maximizing the value derived from these technologies.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Franz Schubert is the VP of Revenue at Giant Swarm, an Open Source as a Service company. With a strong focus on open source infrastructure strategy, business value generation, and communication, he collaborates with senior management to drive impactful solutions. Passionate about the intersection of open source and business growth, Franz helps organizations harness the power of open technology to scale efficiently and innovate effectively.