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Chris Krycho
LambdaConf 2025
May 12, 2025
Infrastructure, Common Goods,
and the Future of Open Source
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The Log4j Incident (2021)
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What happened—technically?
The Log4j Incident (2021)
• A foundationa
l
e
l
ement of the Java ecosystem for decades
• Design a
l
l
owed remote execution and data extraction
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What happened—socially?
The Log4j Incident (2021)
• A
l
ibaba identi
fi
ed and reported the vu
l
nerabi
l
ity
• “P
l
ease hurry up.”
• The Apache Logging Services team con
fi
rmed it and then
fi
xed it
• A team of 16 unpaid vo
l
unteers
• Many of whom worked nights and a weekend to
fi
x it
• …pure
l
y for professiona
l
pride.
• The broader ecosystem scramb
l
ed to patch the vu
l
nerabi
l
ity
• A
ff
ected 8% of packages on Maven
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Log4j is a (digital) kind of
infrastructure.
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Log4j is a (digital) kind of
common good.
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Log4j was built by
unfunded volunteers.
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Open source software is
infrastructure.
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Open source software is
weird infrastructure.
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Infrastructure
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What is
Infrastructure?
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What do these have in common?
Examples of Infrastructure
• Bridges, cana
l
s, roads
• Freight—trains, boats, aircraft, the occasiona
l
horse and wagon
• Power p
l
ants/e
l
ectrica
l
stations, p
l
umbing, sewage & water treatment
• Increasing
l
y: computing
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 10
What makes infrastructure infrastructure?
“All of the stu
ff
that you don’t think about,” turns out to be
a surprisingly good starting point. For something to be
considered infrastructure, its presence and characteristics
are taken as a given.
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 10
What makes infrastructure infrastructure?
“All of the stu
ff
that you don’t think about,” turns out to be
a surprisingly good starting point. For something to be
considered infrastructure, its presence and characteristics
are taken as a given.
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Software as Infrastructure
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Everything I did not think about while building this talk
Software as Infrastructure?
• U
l
ysses for writing, Keynote for presenting
• Many OSS
l
ibraries
• Swift (OSS) and ObjC
• C
l
ang (OSS)
• LLVM (OSS)
• macOS
• Darwin
• XNU (OSS) + FreeBSD (OSS)
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LLVM and Clang
Software as Infrastructure?
• Origina
l
l
y bui
l
t by fo
l
ks eventua
l
l
y emp
l
oyed at App
l
e
• Contributions from—
• Indie hackers bui
l
ding their own
l
anguages
• Goog
l
e (huge competitor to App
l
e!)
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This contribution pattern is
extremely common.
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This contribution pattern is
very strange.
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Extremely common & very strange
Contribution patterns
• Not funded
l
ike infrastructure
• Not funded by norma
l
market mechanisms
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How Open-Source Works
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How the sausage gets made
How Open-Source Works
• Who makes it?
• Why do they make it?
• Do they get paid for it?
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How the sausage gets made
How Open-Source Works
• Who makes it?
• Individua
l
s
• Groups
• Why do they make it?
• Do they get paid for it?
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How the sausage gets made
How Open-Source Works
• Who makes it?
• Individua
l
s
• Groups
• Why do they make it?
• Interest/passion/fun
• Fixing a bug or sharing a so
l
ution
• Pro
fi
t (?)
• Do they get paid for it?
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How companies produce open-source software
How Open-Source Works
• Not the main product
• “Commoditizing a comp
l
ement” (undercutting competitors)
• Part of the funne
l
• The main product
• Dua
l l
icensing
• Se
l
l
ing support
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The Infrastructure
Assumption
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 10
Infrastructural systems are famously boring
because the best possible outcome is nothing
happening, or at least nothing unexpected or
untoward.
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Someone is responsible
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Someone is on the hook
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Is someone responsible or on the hook?
The Infrastructure Assumption
• No warranty c
l
ause
• No shared responsibi
l
ity
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Is someone responsible or on the hook?
The Infrastructure Assumption
• No warranty c
l
ause
• No shared responsibi
l
ity
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Is someone responsible or on the hook?
The Infrastructure Assumption
• No warranty c
l
ause
• No shared responsibi
l
ity
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Perceived responsibility vs. reality
The Infrastructure Assumption
Deve
l
opers have:
• No idea who is using their code.
• No
l
ega
l
re
l
ationship with those users.
• No
fi
nancia
l
re
l
ationship with those users.
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Fix it yourself
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Build legal &
fi
nancial
relationships with maintainers
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Coordination problems
The Infrastructure Assumption
• How much is a
fi
x worth?
• Which companies shou
l
d pay for the
fi
x?
• And how much shou
l
d each company pay?
• Who is responsib
l
e to co
l
l
ect and distribute those funds?
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Value
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Infrastructure is a public good
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 105
[“Public good”] has a very speci
fi
c and distinct meaning: in
contrast to a private good, a public good is nonrivalrous and
nonexcludable. “Nonrivalrous” means that one person
having access to or enjoying a good does not preclude other
people from doing the same. “Nonexcludable” means that
people can't be prevented from using and bene
fi
ting from
it.…
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 105
Private goods have an obvious business model. Make the
thing, sell the thing. There’s generally much less incentive
for the private sector to produce nonexcludable goods,
because if you can't prevent people from receiving a bene
fi
t
and they no longer have a reason to pay for it, they
presumably won't—the “free rider” problem. Too many free
riders and too few paying customers means that the
provider won't be able to make a pro
fi
t if their business
model is based on selling access to that bene
fi
t.
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We all bene
fi
t from
infrastructure.
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 120
Infrastructural systems, by their nature, are more than just
technical; they're inextricably social and political because
they are intrinsically collective. … Because they
incorporate nonmonetary externalities, both positive and
negative, they can't easily be valued or assessed like a
consumer good, where it’s “worth it” to buy something or
not. So they don't lend themselves to decision-making that
focuses solely on the costs or the returns on investment.
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“value captured” &
“value generated”
are not value neutral terms.
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metaphysical capitalism
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How open-source software di
ff
ers from physical infrastructure
What is striking and distinctive
• Without exp
l
icit coordination—often without any coordination
• Without pub
l
ic funding—often without any funding
• How the free rider prob
l
em shows up
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Open-Source Software is
by nature a common good.
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People’s time is
not a common good.
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Polity
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—Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1913
The form or constitution by which any
institution is organized; the recognized
principles which lie at the foundation of
any human institution.
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—Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, 1913
The form or constitution by which any
institution is organized; the recognized
principles which lie at the foundation of
any human institution.
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There is no
CE
O
of
O
pe
n- S o
u
r
c
e S of t
w
ar e
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“Show up and do things,
if you want to.”
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Anarchy and Anarchism
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Power
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Values
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 39
Like all technologies, these systems incorporate the values
of their builders. Many infrastructural systems, like
municipal water supplies, include ideals like serving the
public good and universal provision, or meeting the basic
needs of everyone in a community. But some of the values
are far less laudable: the social and environmental costs of
high-quality infrastructural systems for one group are often
borne by others who are not in that group.
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Open-source software
as good infrastructure
entails obligations.
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The Future
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 39
Infrastructural systems are famously boring because the
best possible outcome is nothing happening, or at least
nothing unexpected or untoward.
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 10
Infrastructural systems are famously boring because the
best possible outcome is nothing happening, or at least
nothing unexpected or untoward. But nothing happens
and nothing continues to happen as a result of su
ffi
cient
attention, specialized care, and unceasing oversight.
“Nothing happening” is usually the result of careful
inspection schedules, preventive maintenance, and
planned replacement, all of which require resources to be
devoted to to what will be, at best, a null outcome.
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—Deb Chachra, How Infrastructure Works, p. 10
Infrastructural systems are famously boring because the
best possible outcome is nothing happening, or at least
nothing unexpected or untoward. But nothing happens
and nothing continues to happen as a result of su
ffi
cient
attention, specialized care, and unceasing oversight.
“Nothing happening” is usually the result of careful
inspection schedules, preventive maintenance, and
planned replacement, all of which require resources to be
devoted to to what will be, at best, a null outcome.
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—Alan Jacobs,
Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,
The New Atlantis, Winter 2016
If instead of thinking of the Internet in statist
terms we apply the logic of subsidiarity, we
might be able to imagine the digital equivalent
of a Mondragon cooperative.
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—Alan Jacobs,
Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,
The New Atlantis, Winter 2016
If instead of thinking of the Internet in statist
terms we apply the logic of subsidiarity, we
might be able to imagine the digital equivalent
of a Mondragon cooperative.
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—Alan Jacobs,
Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,
The New Atlantis, Winter 2016
If instead of thinking of the Internet in statist
terms we apply the logic of subsidiarity, we
might be able to imagine the digital equivalent
of a Mondragon cooperative.
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—Alan Jacobs,
Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,
The New Atlantis, Winter 2016
If instead of thinking of the Internet in statist
terms we apply the logic of subsidiarity, we
might be able to imagine the digital equivalent
of a Mondragon cooperative.
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—Alan Jacobs,
Attending to Technology: Theses for Disputation,
The New Atlantis, Winter 2016
If instead of thinking of the Internet in statist
terms we apply the logic of subsidiarity, we
might be able to imagine the digital equivalent
of a Mondragon cooperative.
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Foundations
Collectives
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Foundations
Collectives
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Foundations
Collectives
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Conclusion
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Chris Krycho
LambdaConf 2025
May 12, 2025
Infrastructure, Common Goods,
and the Future of Open Source