Most of the conversation regarding software sustainability revolves around a few questions: "Do I have the rights to modify this software?", "Will my future self be able to obtain a new identical copy of this software in 5 years?", "Will my future self be able to run this software on new state-of-the-art hardware?". One question that is rarely discussed is "Will the company or group behind this software continue to provide support next year?" The Institute for Research Software has started many conversations regarding the sustainability of software created and maintained by academic groups. In this blog post, I explore the last question only regarding for-profit companies.

In 2022, Charlie Marsh started an MIT licensed, extremely fast Python linter written in Rust, named Ruff, which soon started to be adopted by famous Python projects such as FastAPI. Adopting Ruff was an easy choice given that one has the right to modify Ruff (MIT licensed), one would be able to get a copy from Software Heritage's archive if Microsoft killed GitHub, and one could expect to be able to run Ruff on new hardware given that Rust is a first class citizen in the Linux kernel.

Recently (on 19 March 2026), the company that has been developing Ruff, Astral, announced that they are joining OpenAI (a major AI organisation based in the US with a complicated corporate structure). The announcement includes the following:

"Open source is at the heart of that impact and the heart of that story; it sits at the center of everything we do. [...] We'll keep building in the open, alongside our community – and for the broader Python ecosystem – just as we have from the start."

But it was not enough to avoid the internet being flooded with questions regarding the future of Ruff. Although it is early days to make any predictions about Ruff’s future, we can take the time to reflect.

The Catastrophic Example

Perhaps the most famous example of an open source project going to the graveyard after the acquisition of the company that developed it is OpenOffice after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems. A fork (LibreOffice) was established soon after the acquisition citing concerns over Oracle's management of OpenOffice when Oracle significantly reduced the number of developers assigned to it. Today, LibreOffice continues to be developed and is widely utilised.

The Reputation Example

In the 90s, the first Linux distributions started to form. Among these was Red Hat Linux, developed by Red Hat (the company). Over the years, Red Hat provided commercial support for some of the free software that is part of the GNU project. This mutualism between Red Hat, the GNU project and many other open source projects over the years built a feeling of thrust that projects would continue to be supported.

In 2018, IBM acquired Red Hat. I don't remember, at the time of the acquisition, the internet being flooded with questions about when IBM would change the license of Red Hat products and make it closed source, or discontinue some unprofitable services. It only took a few years and, in 2020, Red Hat announced the end of their free Linux distribution (CentOS).

Unfortunately, users learnt that even without an acquisition, companies that build their business around an open source product will change the license to increase their revenue. For example: Docker introduced a mandatory subscription for Docker Desktop in 2021 and pull limits in 2024; Anaconda changed the terms of services of their default repository in 2024.

The Donation Example

Something that I'm seeing more often is companies donating projects to the Linux Foundation. The first big project I remember this happening to was Kubernetes, when Google donated it to the recently created Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which would be owned by the Linux Foundation. The Kubernetes project continued to grow in its new home and the CNCF has welcomed more projects since it was established in 2015.

The latest big project that followed this path was React, which Meta donated to the recently created React Foundation and would also be owned by the Linux Foundation.

Final Reflection

I don't think that donating projects to non-profit organisations is the answer to the question that started this blog post ("Will the company behind this software continue to provide support next year?"), but I believe that a neutral space for companies and individual contributors to collaborate towards the continuous support of the software that we need is something that will benefit software sustainability.