Growing HashiCorp From Dorm Room OSS

Vagrant — my first successful OSS project — was started in my college dorm room in 2010. For years, I made exactly $0 from Vagrant and actually spent more money on it than I received. I started HashiCorp in 2012 to help me work on my projects full time. Today, HashiCorp software is downloaded multiple times every second, the company behind it is valued at nearly $2 billion, and our projects remain MPL2 licensed with vibrant communities.

This talk explores the path I took to building sustainable open source projects, how the projects changed over time, how the technology had to change over time, how my personal role changed, and the challenges I foresee in the future. The goal is to give a glimpse into my experiences and hope this gives more data for the ongoing bigger picture discussion of sustainable open source.