Episode 46: Commercial Open Source with Joseph Jacks

Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Guest Joseph Jacks Founder and General Partner of OSS Capital Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! On today’s episode, we have special guest, Joseph Jacks, Founder of OSS Capital and also works on Open Core Summit, which is a conference he founded as well. Today we discuss with Joseph what he does at OSS Capital, the companies they invest in and how he helps commercial Open Source Companies. We will also find out about what he did at Open Core Summit last year and find out about when and where the next one will take place. Download this episode now to find out more! [00:01:10] Joseph tells us what he does at OSS Capital. He also tells us what he means by Commercial Open Source. [00:03:22] Richard and Joseph discuss GitHub and GitLab. [00:11:29] Justin brings up the business source license which is very controversial, and he wants to know Joseph’s involvement with it. [00:17:08] Joseph tells us about OSS.cash, the conference he did in 2013 with the spreadsheet data, and how the Open Core Summit went in September 2019, right before COVID hit. [00:22:49] Eric is fascinated by Joseph’s process and he says it seems like he’s trying to find that brief moment when a project starts to take off, but hasn’t really considered creating a corporation, creating a company to generate money around it. It seems like you’re looking for a unicorn before it grows its horn. Joseph elaborates on this. [00:26:48] Joseph talks about RISC-V since they are invested in that company. He also tells us other companies they are invested in. [00:30:36] Joseph explains how commercial offensive software companies are different. Also, he tells us how they help commercial Open Source Companies early on. [00:37:03] Where can you find Joseph on the Internet, URL’s, or Twitter? Find out here. Spotlight [00:37:44] Justin’s spotlight is EB.js. [00:38:23] Eric’s spotlight is since Code Fund shut down, he wants to extend his gratitude and say thank you to all the publishers, open sou