The author reflects on a decade-long project exploring open source economics. The core argument uses an evolutionary biology model—hawks versus doves—to explain software sustainability. Closed source acts as the hawk, withholding code and charging premiums, while open source functions as the dove, giving code away and gaining developer attention.

A stable equilibrium exists where software is free for commercial use under permissive licenses like MIT, BSD, and Apache. However, this stability is fragile. History shows that any attempt to charge for open source at the license level triggers market disruption.

In 2017, the Apache Foundation banned React's BSD+Patents license, forcing Facebook to relicense to MIT. In 2021, Elasticsearch moved to a source-available license; Amazon forked it as OpenSearch, now at the Linux Foundation. Similarly, HashiCorp's Terraform became OpenTofu under the Linux Foundation after HashiCorp's acquisition by IBM.

Most recently, in March 2024, Redis changed its license, prompting the Valkey fork to gain immediate cloud provider support. The pattern is consistent: competently run forks dismantle licensing attempts, not due to ideology, but due to market structure where cheaper, free products inevitably capture the bottom of the market until software costs nothing.