The Linux Foundation reveals the "ugly" secret of how open source is draining your budget - The New Stack
Linux Foundation’s report reveals that contributing to open source offers a 2x-5x ROI. Learn why private forks create technical debt and how to invest wisely.
Note
Curator's note
Measuring the financial return of open source contributions is notoriously difficult, yet this breakdown offers a pragmatic framework for leaders to justify upstream engagement. It moves beyond vague notions of "giving back" to highlight how reduced technical debt and faster hiring cycles directly impact the bottom line.
By treating code as a strategic asset rather than a cost center, you gain influence over the roadmap of tools your business relies on every single day.
Or you can just fork the software and deal with the constant struggle of adjusting the codebase of your legacy codebase with updates.
Highlights
Companies actively investing in open source are seeing massive returns, while those treating it as “freeware” are drowning in technical debt.
Organizations that only consume open source and maintain private forks face high hidden costs, with technical debt and duplicated engineering effort adding up to millions of dollars in avoidable spending
even organizations that “believe in the power of open source” often default to private workarounds and internal forks because of legacy policies and risk perceptions, especially in heavily regulated sectors
On average, the expense that they…spend to sponsor a contribution or to go to an event or things like that, they’re getting two to five times more of that value back.
So if they spend a thousand on paying one of their engineers to contribute to an open source project, they’re getting two to five thousand worth of value back from them.”
thenewstack.io Created: February 27, 2026 Updated: April 30, 2026 link