Next steps for the business and product strategy guidelines

[timfrick]

Here are notes from the last business and product strategy workshop where we split up those guidelines:

https://github.com/w3c/sustainableweb-ig/blob/main/business-product/aug21-2025-workshop-notes.md

If you have any comments or suggestions, please add them to this issue.

We're also scheduling another meeting/workshop in September. Here's the poll to choose when: https://savvycal.com/p/timfrick/35f48f81

Please complete the poll ASAP as we plan to schedule the meeting this week.

We will discuss:

• Further clarity to define differences between business- and product-specific recommendations
• Overlap with UX guidelines
• How potentially moving away from roles-based categories to reorganize recommendations by content, product, tooling, and organization might impact these guidelines
• How to represent a broader set of perspectives in the co-creation process for these guidelines

[fullo]

Regarding the 5.28, here my thought with a parallel of what is happening in the AI market:

Open source software is worth $8.8 trillion to replace, but 96% of that value depends on just 5% of contributors who often lack stable funding. Meanwhile, organizations building "responsible AI" systems with sophisticated governance frameworks are doing so on digital infrastructure they don't contribute to maintaining.

We spend billions on physical infrastructure maintenance, but won't invest thousands in the digital infrastructure that powers our AI systems. Denmark seeks digital sovereignty but remains a "taker" in the open-source ecosystem. We require AI vendors to meet sustainability standards, yet overlook their scarce contribution to digital infrastructure (software) sustainability.

Garrett Hardin's 1968 Tragedy of the Commons theory explains this perfectly. In open source software, "companies and individuals extensively use these free resources without necessarily contributing back. They benefit from reduced costs and accelerated development cycles, but often do not invest in the maintenance or improvement of the software they use". This creates a scenario where the burden of maintenance falls disproportionately on a small number of volunteers and dedicated contributors. Over time, this can lead to burnout and a decline in the quality and security of the software, as stated in the blog post about what the New PHP Foundation Means for PHP's Future. You can't have truly responsible, sustainable, and accountable systems built on irresponsibly maintained, unsustainably funded, and unaccountably governed infrastructure.

IMHO

• Contribution vs. consumption = responsibility vs. negligence.
• Sustainability is the responsibility to give to the future generation the same possibilities as we have
• Therefore, Contribution to OSS means Sustainability.

[mgifford]

Thanks @fullo - I'm a big proponent of both OSS and Sustainability. I seem them related, but not equal. I don't see how we have the speed and innovation that we need for sustainability without open source, but there are a number of other things that are needed.

[fullo]

I'm sorry @mgifford , I don't understand your point. Sustainability, as a comprehensive process, has three pillars: environment, social, and governance. OSS can be placed in governance (ie, see the bitname debacle or EU plan to invest on OSS and Linux Foundation report), social (access to OSS software to anyone), and also environmental (as it has an impact on energy consumption).

my PoV is that we should (or must?) change the 5.28 saying that a sustainable approach is not to use OSS but to invest and contribute to it if used on a "sustainable product".

[AlexDawsonUK]

@fullo, 5.28 SC Contribution does now cover this (for the record), unless I'm missing something?

[fullo]

https://github.com/w3c/sustainableweb-ig/blob/main/business-product/aug21-2025-workshop-notes.md#528---use-open-source-where-possible 👈 I'm referring to this; I wrote the GitHub comment after the business strategy meeting to provide more context for the point of changing from "use" to "contribute".