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Open Source Contribution Is Self-Preservation, Not Generosity
Around 90% of commercial software is built on open source, yet only a small fraction of the companies using it give anything back. Meanwhile, the maintainers who keep it running are burning out, and a 2025 survey found 58% of them have considered quitting. In this episode, Brian Wilson and Andi Grabner talk with Sebastian Kister, Chief AI Architect and Lead of OSPO Contribution & Maintainership at Volkswagen Group (assigned by Audi AG). Andi met Sebastian at Cloud Native Days Austria, where his talk on enterprise AI foundations made one point very clear: passive consumption of open source is a long-term risk. Sebastian explains why upstream contribution is a business case and not charity. It shapes the standards your products depend on, extends your product lifecycle, and prevents short-sighted migrations. It also gets you ready for regulation like the EU AI Act and SBOM mandates, and it’s one of the strongest recruiting signals for top engineering talent. He also shows how it can be organized in practice: a group-level OSPO that frees employees to contribute to projects like OpenTelemetry and OpenSearch during work time, and connects the inside world with the outside one. We also dig into: - Sovereignty: why it has less to do with geography than with control, business continuity, and being able to leave the room on your own terms. - Make or buy: Andi plays devil’s advocate on whether buying enterprise software is a safe alternative to contributing. - Evaluating vendors: why contribution should become a criterion when enterprises choose vendors. - Writing for AI: whether to write blogs for humans or for AI agents. And yes, the world’s best limoncello of 2025 doesn’t come from Italy. It comes from Sebastian’s distillery in Bavaria. Links we discussed Sebastians LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sebastiankister/ Cloud Native Austria Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zue4cg8lcR0 Sebastians new blog: https://sebastiankister.de/keynote/
