The global open source community is currently hard at work behind the scenes on an exciting new initiative. Visitors to Opensource.com may have recently noticed a quiet period on the platform, but this lull is indicative of a major project currently in the works. While specific details regarding the upcoming launch remain tightly under wraps for the moment, there is already plenty of broader context, history, and philosophy to discuss as the community looks toward its next chapter. And what better way to begin exploring this evolution than by examining the very foundation of the modern internet and the networks that bind us together?
The Internet and Top-Level Domains
To understand where the open source community is heading, it is helpful to look at where the digital world began. As most technologists know, the internet is fundamentally a network—a word that, by definition, describes a group of interconnected connections. In fact, the term "internet" is a portmanteau combining the concepts of "interconnected" and "network."
In its earliest days, the internet consisted of just two primary networks: a military network and an academic network. As the technology matured and gained popularity far beyond those initial specialized groups, it quickly became apparent that different designations were necessary to help users navigate the digital landscape. Society needed a way to instantly differentiate a commercial entity from a charitable organization, a university from a governmental department, or a hobbyist project from a corporate enterprise.
These essential designations came to be known as top-level domains, commonly abbreviated as TLDs. Today, internet users can choose from a vast and diverse ecosystem of TLDs spanning geographic regions, specialized industries, and cultural interests. However, for a long time during the infancy of the World Wide Web, only a handful of these extensions existed.
Those original top-level domains remain remarkably popular and culturally significant to this day. Most internet users instantly recognize that when they navigate to a web address ending in .com, they are visiting a commercial site. Conversely, when a user visits an address ending in .org, they understand they are accessing the digital home of a non-profit organization. These suffixes do more than just route traffic; they tell a story about the identity and purpose behind the organization operating the website.
Open Source Is a Network
Just as the internet is built on a foundation of interconnected networks, open source can represent many different things depending on the context. Open source software and culture can be commercial, non-profit, academic, or artistic. Regardless of the specific form it takes, however, open source is always, at its core, a network.
Sometimes that network manifests as a literal infrastructure of connected computers sharing code repositories, continuous integration pipelines, and distributed servers. But most importantly, and far more powerfully, it is a network of people. Whether contributors, maintainers, and users are gathering together in person at a massive international conference, chatting over drinks at a local pub, or collaborating asynchronously in an online chat room, the open source movement is fundamentally a vibrant community of human beings working toward shared goals.
For the past twelve years, the website Opensource.com has been proudly supported by a commercial entity, providing a dedicated digital space for stories, news, and insights about open source software and culture. Yet, there has always been a distinct structural dynamic at play. The people—representing the readers, writers, advocates, and creators, which includes everyone from casual observers to core contributors—who make up the heartbeat of the Opensource.com community are not commercial entities themselves. They are simply people, driven by a passion for collaboration, transparency, and shared knowledge.
Now, after more than a decade of publication under its previous operational model, that relationship is shifting. In exactly one month, Opensource.com is set to resolve that long-standing structural mismatch, ushering in a fresh chapter designed to better reflect the human-centric nature of the community it serves. Stay tuned as more details about this upcoming project are revealed in the weeks ahead.
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