Yesterday, I had some discussions with another open-source founder and he listed quite a few good points about how OSS companies of today are different from the previous decades: 1. Today companies are started with the OSS project and not many years after the project existed  2. They are created with an intention of sustainability and revenue generation. Developer users also want an OSS company to have revenue, unlike the fanatic developers of the past 3. The products are generally aimed at companies instead of individuals 4. Faster product improvement than in the past(because OSS projects used to be side projects). Also we aren't waiting around for contributors to volunteer, instead we are moving ahead to do the right things 5. Users have access to cloud hosting and APIs, so ease of getting started is 100x better than before 6. Real focus on design and UX. Well-designed OSS used to be an oxymoron, not today I think that's very true 🙂

Another trend I have seen is better licensing like MIT / Apache vs GPL which allow companies to keep some things proprietary or build on other tools without worrying about the GPL implications

My only exception to those points might be at point 6) and, for some reason, usually relates to Java desktop apps. Certainly on the Mac as soon as one launches a Java app it's immediately obvious that it's Java in terms of the UI/UX and my heart sinks.... Thankfully Electron is a thing. ;-)