Participant info
Tarus Balog
Founder
The OpenNMS Group
Running an open source company for 20 years teaches you a lot of things. While such companies are no different from many businesses, open source software companies are unique in that you can’t really sell “free” software. Thus your business must be based around different products. I am eager to attend the Open Source Founders Summit to share my experiences with others that are either just starting out or who have open source companies, and I hope my stories will be useful.
I have been involved in managing communications networks professionally since 1988, and unprofessionally since 1978 when I got my first computer - a TRS-80 from Radio Shack. Having worked as a network management consultant for many years, I was constantly frustrated in the lack of flexibility involved in commercial solutions such as OpenView and Tivoli, as well as shocked by their high prices. Looking for a better solution, I turned to open source and joined the OpenNMS project in 2001 and become the principal administrator of the project in 2002. The OpenNMS Group, the services company I created to maintain the project, was successful and at one point had three of the Fortune 5 companies as customers. It was sold in 2019 and I left the project in 2021.
Tarus is currently Principal Technical Strategist, Open Source, at Amazon Web Services (AWS).