In my work at Google and Sysdig, I’ve seen first hand how open source can have a powerful business benefit: from creating new markets, to boosting product adoption. However, for every success story I’ve worked on, there are many companies and leaders who are confused about how to use open source well.

Open source is not a business strategy, but it can function as part of one—it’s easy to miss this when media picks up “open source” as a big part of a company’s success story. Starry-eyed leaders can say things like “I want to do the next Kubernetes,” rather than address the dynamics of their own particular market. Seeing the end result of a rockstar project isn’t the same as knowing the journey, and why everything worked out as it did.

What you need to do is understand your business needs, and how open source can contribute. Let’s root this in some example benefits you can reap from open source in engineering, business, and human capital.

  1. Engineering velocity: much of computing isn’t differentiated, and by agreeing to use the same open code, you move faster. At Google, we released TensorFlow in order to accelerate researchers: many ML and AI papers built on TensorFlow, in turn speeding the rate at which Google could consume that new research.
  2. Speeding adoption: open source functions as the most effective testament for a paid product, as it comes with deep engineering buy-in. If you capture a large user base, even a small percentage of conversions from open source to paid drives strong revenue. At Sysdig, we found the majority of buyers for threat detection were already Falco users, and had bought into the technical approach.
  3. Attracting talent: developers love the friction-free way they can adopt open source, and grow careers based on their contributions and communities. A strong community approach gives you a talent pool to hire from, and social incentives to keep developers focused around your way of doing things.

Open source in business is obviously a lot more than the code. There’s a spectrum of tactics you can use to fuel diverse goals such as ecosystem creation, on community, or on owning a de facto industry standard. The biggest hurdle to clear, though, is to get clear on what you want.

The design of your project, its community, and even the way APIs are structured, will depend on which goals you want to hit. There’s no magic bullet: successful commercial open source is intentionally designed and marketed—from code to community—with a business goal in mind.