In dog piling onto the news about early OpenStack provider Nebula’s demise, I’ll use their news to reinforce my belief that open communities need to ensure that funds are flowing to leaders and contributors. This is one of the reasons that I invest time in DefCore: having a clear base product definition helps create healthy vendors.

Open source software is not simply free VC funded projects. The industry needs a stable transparent supply chain of software to build on.

I am not asserting anything about Nebula’s business or model. To me, it is a single downward data point in my ongoing review of vendor health in the OpenStack community. OpenStack features and functions will not matter if vendors in the community cannot afford to sustain them.

For enterprises to rely on open source software supply chains, they need to make sure they are paying into the community. The simplest route to “paying in” is through vendors.