Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

Open source used to mean something simple: the code is open, the community builds it, and everyone benefits. That world is gone. Today, billion-dollar companies release model weights and call it "open source"

Projects launch with permissive licenses but lock their APIs behind paywalls. Foundations host projects where one vendor controls 95% of the commits. And a new generation of developers is entering open source through AI-generated pull requests they barely understand.

I've spent 7 consecutive Kubernetes release cycles on the release team, helped build and maintain Kargo - a OSS project for GitOps continuous delivery and worked as a CNCF Ambassador helping new contributors navigate this ecosystem

I've watched the definition of "open source" stretch, bend & sometimes break in real time.

This talk is about the real problems developers face today when they try to contribute to, depend on, or build careers around open source projects that don't play by the old rules. I'll share what I've learned about spotting "open-washing" evaluating project health beyond the GitHub star count, and building genuine community in an era where the incentives have fundamentally shifted.