The rights ratchet model uses open source to secure adoption and market acceptance for a stack or infrastructure element and then gradually removes viable open source freedoms as the founders seek to control their customers and ecosystem and increase revenue from them. It's not a new phenomenon—companies have been gaming open source this way for decades. Yet developers keep getting caught out as yet another big name clicks the final step of the ratchet and goes closed. Most recently it's been database companies but there are other earlier examples.

How can you spot the early signs? This talk will explain the model, and suggest red flags to look out for if you don't want to end up locked-in to a once community-open project that really only saw community as a synonym for "customer."