Like almost all human endeavors, open-source software development involves
a range of power dynamics. Companies, developers, and users are all
concerned with the power to influence the direction of the software — and,
often, to profit from it. At the 2025 Open
Source Summit Europe, Dawn Foster talked about how those dynamics can
play out, with an eye toward a couple of tactics — rug pulls and forks — that
are available to try to shift power in one direction or another.