Comment by lukaslalinsky
11 hours ago
It's actually common, many companies develop their products this way. The source is available, you can see the VCS, but you can't participate in the development. That's why I see this as signal that it's going to turn into a company.
Well, technically it is a "company" already as it is registered formally as a non-profit. They have income (sponsors) and paid employees.
To my eye, this change does not appear to be driven by a change in corporate governance or profit motive.
They explain that the change and the timing is driven by two things.
1 - The burden and of processing public contributions has increased with the rise of AI
2 - They need to focus and stabliize the code base in preparation to introduce a public alpha
Those reasons ring true enough for me that I do not need to go looking for other motivations. I do not like this change but I can see why they would.
However many if not most of these companies use "Source Available" licenses which say "Thou shall look, thou shan't compile". This is very different than Open Source license of Ladybird itself.