I think this is a really good topic, I can't wait to see what you come up with

I would sum it up as "sustainability" which is a meaningless term

The challenge is everyone needs something different

Some people might need to be paid, others are being paid but fighting AI slop

Then you have some trying to fight off freeloader companies with silly demands

The list is infinitely long

some legends like you may retire and there may not be enough new blood to replace them.

I'm thinking about the effect that AI code tools may have on a generation of new sw engineers. Not only in their skills but also in their attitude regarding effort.

Projects dying due to lack of people available to maintain it.

Personal q. Have you thought about your own project(s) longevity? The Github contributors page shows there are 4ish people who have been contributing consistently in the recent past.

Can we collect some samples for future cloning purposes? 😜

Projects die:
I have seen some "frankenapps" with older releases or old versions of multiple software. Meh.

Some apps/tools/utilities work fine without updates, others had vulnerabilities and was risky business.

Better to search for alternatives to unmaintained and use compatible @latest versions.

When someone picks up an unmaintained project - or tool, that culture may not be as welcoming as the previous.

+ demands of support and features - the struggle is real! Burnout happens.

Licensing.

The MIT/BSD based licenses seems to get a lot of traction. And while that extreme freedom those licenses has advantages, it has a darker side-effect which can end up with more fragmentation.

For example, take the uutils project, aiming to replace coreutils. If commercial projects pulls in this as a replacement, they can add changes to uutils and never needing to share back the changes they did.

If those changes results in behavioral changes, going from one distro to another one may have quite some compatibility implications. Writing scripts using coreutils/uutils binaries suddenly need to account for various behaviors.

uutils is just a simple example. But GPL licenses can help reduce the fragmentation aspects. Sure, a GPL project can be forked - but it will be with a new name, so it is much clearer that "this is different".

watering down of the open-source ethos.

I'm worried that people are taking open-source for granted, forgetting what it's all about, bending (and allowing others to bend) the open-source definition, or just slapping on an open-source license while acting against the spirit of open-source in every other aspect.

I would think of misguided regulation. States become increasingly aware of the importance and ubiquitousness of OS software. That's not bad. But they often don't understand the model, and somehow try to fit OSS and its authors into the same frameworks as commercial providers.

So we need better models. Some of this is discussed in the genevadialogue.ch/geneva-manua…

GENEVA MANUAL – On Responsible Behaviour in Cyberspace

Context Main concepts Introduction Cyber norms, roles and responsibilities Messages References Annex GENEVA MANUAL On Responsible Behaviour in Cyberspace Implementation of Norms by Relevant Non-State Stakeholders DOWNLOAD AS PDF 1…

^{Geneva Dialogue}

* UX and human-centred Design.

This is not a risk like the other items because the competition is pretty poor. But it is a huge opportunity.

The open source community is overflowing with technical talent. But not so much on user research, service design, ux design, visual and content design, accessibility.

also

* Fascism

I don't just mean supply chain attacks eg pagers, I mean harassment, blocking eg from services, infiltration to discredit, doxing the community, censorship.

1/2

- 1970-1980: FLOSS seeds (Emacs)
- 1980-1990: FLOSS principles (GNU)
- 1990-2000: FLOSS community (Linux)
- 2000-2010: FLOSS businesses (RH)
- 2010-2020: FLOSS big tech (Google)
- 2020-2030: FLOSS Governments wake up

The current situation is that we run trains on rails built by volunteers in hackerspaces.

I believe governments will understand the usefulness of guaranteeing the interoperability and stability of our digital infrastructures, and invest in Free Software to achieve this.

corporate capture.

we already have it, but we don't doubt it's gonna get worse.

I can't rank the issues for all of FOSS projects but to add one missing in your suggestions:

The increasing fragmentation of development platforms after a phase of >10 years of concentration on #GitHub.com. I think its decline started with the acquisition by #Microsoft. That wasn't good either but fragmentation makes it harder to get contributions by newcomers who are not yet part of your platform.

@jornfranke
yes, I think the infrastructure must be strengthened, which boils down to finances.

Maybe Microsoft and Android (alphabet) does not play nice and think that open source is getting to strong, so maybe they try to push it down, just a thought.

Another aspect is accessibility, maybe linux improves on that.

And how will OpenSource cope with the AI stuff, some influence is to be expected?

And what about the legal aspects. Rights are being curtailed everywhere. What impact does this have on OpenSource community. e.g. Cryptographically sophisticated software could be affected by that. But maybe some people who had previously done considerable work will also be missing from the community (and if it's just because of demographic change...).

Resilient and robust infrastructure certainly can't hurt in stormy times. Enough money for unexpected events certainly won't be a bad idea either.