Commitment to Open Source
The Rugix Project is driven by Silitics, a for-profit company. I, Maximilian Köhl, run Silitics as a solo consultancy offering software and system development and consulting services. The various tools of the Rugix Project have initially been developed out of the concrete needs and requirements of my clients' projects and the strong belief that we can do better when it comes to building reliable embedded devices. I am investing a significant amount of time into this project and aim for it to become a standard solution for developing embedded devices.
That being said, the development of this project is so far not self-sustaining from a business perspective and even further away from being profitable.1 I am convinced, however, that I can built a sustainable business around it, as it allows me to reach new clients and offer additional services, such as support and custom integrations, as well as enterprise-focused complementary products.2 In doing so, I strive for maximal transparency with users, contributors, and supporters, and I am committed to keeping this project open-source and permissively licensed for the benefit of everyone.
I am still in the process of figuring out how to run this project and my company. While the ultimate goal is to deliver additional services and products on top of the Rugix Project, initially, we may offer enterprise variants of Rugix tools that do include additional features not found in the open-source version. In the medium-term, however, I would like to transition away from this approach as it leads to conflicts of interest, for instance, when contributors want to work on features that are part of for-profit offerings. In any case, we will not reject any contributions to existing Rugix tools solely on the grounds that they are in conflict with current for-profit offerings.
If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to me. Your feedback and support are crucial to our collective success, and I welcome any inquiries or suggestions you may have. Thank you for your trust.