open-source-company-strategy skill (samber): decide what your company opens

Decides what a company open-sources and what stays closed, why, who decides, and what it promises never to close.

Installs: 12.7K; on skills.sh
Stars: 7; on GitHub
Files: 6; besides SKILL.md
Updated: Nov 2026; last repo commit

open-source-company-strategy makes your agent act as a strategist for a company, not a maintainer of one project. It lists each candidate asset on its own row, names the motive, runs each asset through five gates and writes a brief with open, closed and not-yet verdicts.

It triggers on "should we open source this?", where to draw an open-core line, which features stay paid, or who signs off on open sourcing. It is not about picking a license. The folder holds SKILL.md and five reference files and bundles no scripts.

Good for

Founders and product leaders asking "should we open source this?"
Executives who need a named decider and a published commitment
Open-source program office and DevRel leads setting company policy

Install open-source-company-strategy

Claude Code

Copy this prompt.

Install the open-source-company-strategy skill in Claude Code. Run this command:

/plugin marketplace add samber/developer-relations-skills
/plugin install developer-relations-skills@developer-relations-skills

Then check that it loaded and tell me how to use it.

2
Paste it into Claude Code. It shows the change and asks before running it.

The README recommends installing the whole collection because its skills reference each other, and open-source-company-strategy names other skills in the collection to hand work to. The whole-collection routes add all 93 skills in the repo (counted from the git tree); the repo holds no hooks, agents, commands or MCP server files, and 14 of its skills bundle a script. Pick one route per agent.

From the project README. Source.

What's in the skill

When it loads

Decides what a company open-sources and what stays proprietary, names the strategic motive for each side of the line, says who owns the decision, and states what the company commits never to close. Use whenever someone asks "should we open source this?", "what should we open source", "where do we draw the open-core line", "which features stay paid", "who signs off on open sourcing this", or wants a company-level open source strategy rather than a plan for one project - even if they frame it as a licensing question. Produces an asset-by-asset open/closed verdict, a value-capture and irreversibility check, a public non-reversal commitment and a re-evaluation trigger. Not license selection - use samber/developer-relations-skills@oss-license-strategy.

Sections in SKILL.md

Scope check before starting
Interview
Step 1 - Inventory the assets separately
Step 2 - Name the motive before evaluating anything
Step 3 - Calibrate to the company type
Step 4 - Brainstorm the line before drawing it
Step 5 - Put every asset through the five gates
Step 6 - Stress the line against the competitive case
Step 7 - Name the decider and the promise
Step 8 - Cost the operating prerequisites
Step 9 - Write the brief and validate it section by section
What we sell - the value-capture surface, in one paragraph
Motive - the primary motive, and the evidence it passes its own test
Open - assets, each with its gate results and its owner
Closed - assets, each with the gate it failed
Not yet - assets deferred, with the condition that would change the verdict

Key facts

Author: Samuel Berthe (samber)
License: MIT (LICENSE file, SKILL.md, plugin.json and README all say MIT)
Installs on skills.sh: 12,724 (as of Nov 2, 2026)
GitHub stars: 8 for the whole collection repo (Nov 2, 2026)
Last commit: Nov 1, 2026 (whole repo)
skills.sh audits: Gen Agent Trust Hub pass, Socket pass, Snyk pass
What is inside: 7 files including SKILL.md: 5 reference files and evals/evals.json
Version in SKILL.md: 1.0.2
Needs: SKILL.md lists nothing to install
Works in: Claude Code, Claude.ai (plugin marketplace), Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and other Agent Skills-compatible tools
Part of: The developer-relations-skills plugin (one plugin in marketplace.json)
Collection size: 93 skills in the repo (counted from the git tree)

What it includes

Routes license, governance, distribution, launch, revenue and funding questions elsewhere.
It hands off only when the whole question belongs to the sibling.
Scope check
Asks up to fourteen questions one at a time until it can name product, assets and decider.
Questions 12 to 14 (date, policy or single asset, effort ceiling) set the ranking of candidate lines.
Interview
Lists every asset on its own row and names one primary motive from eight.
It splits each asset into a differentiating layer and its enablers, and does not rank the motives against each other.
Step 1 and 2 - Inventory and motive
Adjusts the answer for a startup, a late-stage software company or a non-software one.
Each has a different boundary primitive and decision authority.
Step 3 - Calibrate to company type
Presents two or three candidate lines and ranks them.
Interface-open, infrastructure-only and buyer-tiered open core. Only buyer-tiered is a published model; the other two are the skill's own.
Step 4 - Brainstorm the line
Tests each asset on irreversibility, differentiation, value capture, viability, ownership.
An asset failing the irreversibility, value-capture or ownership gate stays closed.
Step 5 - Five gates
Writes an adversarial scenario, names who decides and costs the owners and policies.
It asks for a decision-rights line and a public non-reversal commitment.
Steps 6 to 8 - Stress test, decider, operating cost
Writes a ten-section brief, agreed one section at a time.
What we sell, Motive, Open, Closed, Not yet, Competitive case, Decision rights, Commitments, Operating model and Measurement.
Try: “Draw our open-core line - which features go in the paid tier?”
Step 9 - Strategy brief

From the official docs

Permissions

Low risk

The agent can save notes about your company or project to a file called devrel-context.md, so check that file before you commit or share the folder.

What it can do

Read your data
Create and change things
Delete things
Read-only mode

Watch out for

It may keep notes in devrel-context.md
SKILL.md tells the agent to store a few details about the current task or project, and to use a file called devrel-context.md when its memory lives in a file. Our advice: open that file before you commit or share the folder. github.com
The plugin route installs the whole collection
The README's plugin and extension routes add every skill in the repo; its git tree holds 93. The repo has no hooks, agents, commands or MCP server files, and 14 of its skills bundle a script. Our advice: use the skills CLI command for this skill if you want only it. github.com

Security advisories

No published security advisories as of Nov 2, 2026.

Technical details

Turning on read-only	SKILL.md describes no read-only mode.
Scopes	May store interview answers in devrel-context.md when its memory lives in a file

Questions

How do I install open-source-company-strategy?

The README says to install every skill in the collection, because its skills reference each other. In Claude Code that is the plugin route in the install box above, which adds all 93 skills in the repo. The skills CLI can add just this one. Our advice: pick one route per agent.

What do I get at the end?

A ten-section strategy brief: What we sell, Motive, Open, Closed, Not yet, Competitive case, Decision rights, Commitments, Operating model and Measurement. It does not include a license recommendation or a launch plan.

open-source-company-strategy vs oss-license-strategy?

This skill decides what to open and why, and oss-license-strategy picks the license and contribution policy. SKILL.md says "Not license selection", and the README describes the other skill as choosing a license and contribution policy as one decision.

Can it tell me whether to use a source-available license?

It raises those licenses only when your competitive scenario is concrete, calls them source-available and never open source, and hands the choice of instrument to oss-license-strategy.

Is the five-gate test an industry standard?

It is not. SKILL.md lists the gates, their ordering and the interview horizon as its own baselines and says to present them as defaults. Only the buyer-tiered open-core line is described as a published model.

Does open-source-company-strategy need an API key, and where does it work?

SKILL.md names no API key, account or environment variable. The README documents installs for Claude Code, Claude.ai (add the repo as a plugin marketplace), Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI and any Agent Skills-compatible tool through the skills CLI. The install box has the steps for each.

Is open-source-company-strategy safe to install?

It is instructions plus five reference files, and the folder bundles no scripts. SKILL.md tells the agent to keep project notes in memory, with devrel-context.md as the file when memory is a file. Our advice: do not paste unreleased product plans into a shared project folder that you sync or commit.

Information

updated Nov 2, 2026

Repository: samber/developer-relations-skills
Folder: skills/open-source-company-strategy

samber/developer-relations-skills skills.sh

Sources

Docs, issue trackers and discussions this page is built from.

Show all 2

developer-relations-skills README · github.com
open-source-company-strategy SKILL.md · github.com