Like other successful vendors with open-source roots, MongoDB has adapted its approach to increase monetization while still upholding key tenets of the open-source ethos.
MongoDB has adapted its licensing over the years to increase monetization — while still upholding key tenets of the open-source ethos.While we are seeing massive industry and public interest in AI unicorns such as OpenAI and Anthropic, AI is also a growth factor for many cloud-era unicorns as well.
Some — like Red Hat, MuleSoft and HashiCorp — have been acquired by tech giants, while others such as JFrog continue to deliver innovation and value to their respective customer bases independently. While many factors have contributed to these companies’ recent success, I posit that each of them modifying its open-source strategy was a significant contributing factor. One of the standout examples of this shift in open-source strategy is MongoDB. But before we dig into MongoDB’s formula for breakout growth, let’s touch on the evolution of open source and specifically open-source licensing.Over the past 10 years, we have seen a number of companies change licensing or maintenance policies for open-source projects. The most notable change was how companies moved away from GNU and other open-source licenses in favor of more commercial licensing terms, such as with. If it was not a licensing change, other tactics were deployed to help increase monetization. For instance, Red Hat acquired Centos and changed its lifecycle management policies, which led more companies to adopt Red Hat Enterprise Linux. These changes were partly defensive, since hyperscalers were building services off the sweat equity of open-source projects — while circumventing the companies that were sponsoring and investing in those projects. But I would also suggest that that was not the only reason for the changes. There were existing open-source licenses such as the GPL Afero license that prevented cloud monetization in place early in the cloud era. So I believe the primary driver for licensing changes was to generate improved monetization from enterprises using free open-source code and not paying vendors for solutions. For many open-source CEOs at the time, this change was a bold “bet the company” maneuver. The tradeoff was to take a hit to the company’s reputation, or to be accused of a bait-and-switch strategy. But I also know for a fact that most open-source companies were monetizing less than 5% of their download base, and in some cases less than 1%. So in many ways, abandoning traditional open-source licensing was also a bid for survival and the ability to make continuing investment in new innovations.One of those investments was for open-source companies to transform into SaaS platforms so customers could use the open-source projects without the complexity of on-premises setup and management. The upshot of this was that these new platform companies typically partnered with hyperscalers to host their platforms. So in a way, everyone was able to win as open source went to the cloud. But even with platform repackaging, crafty customers could still download a free open-source edition of the software and run it in generic cloud instances, thus minimizing their costs. Additionally, in some cases the open-source licenses were too rigid to allow for new types of innovation in “platform-only” features to help differentiate the new SaaS initiatives. All in all, the move to open-source Afero licensing and SaaS platforms helped — but still fell a bit short. And over the last decade, we saw more companies leaving open source behind, including MongoDB.Despite the PR hit that many of these companies experienced, with the benefit of time, it looks like they made the right strategic call. MongoDB made its licensing switch in 2018, and its 2025 annual revenue is now projected to be more than 10x what it was prior to that licensing change. It also now hosts more than 70% of its user base on its Atlas SaaS platform, and it was able to acquire Voyage.AI to position MongoDB well for future agentic AI use cases. But in addition to that, there has been a continued adherence to the principles and culture that made open source great to begin with. Based upon the time I’ve recently spent with the MongoDB team, three open-source cultural foundations really stood out.MongoDB is projected to see more than $2 billion in revenue in 2025. Many companies this size consolidate their corporate events into one massive annual event with loads of marketing and partnership announcements. But MongoDB has stuck to its roots by hosting about 20 smaller, more localized events every year. While the recent New York event that I attended was the largest and did include some announcements, it still had the feel of a local techie event with deep-dive sessions, free certifications and minimal marketing hype. Among the announcements, MongoDB debuted new features for the community and enterprise editions that drive parity across the no-cost, on-premises and platform versions. While the platform product still gets the latest and greatest features first, the community edition is not ignored and is still a critical component of the go-to-market strategy.Open-source companies have also stood out over the years by being effective ambassadors for technologies and standards, versus traditional software product marketing. This was driven more by necessity since open-sourced products and features were effectively commoditized. So, a key marketing goal was full-throated endorsement to build user excitement and adoption of the core technology, which led to downloads, which then led to possible monetization. MongoDB still stands out in its belief that JSON is not only a superior database language but also the de facto language for AI. To that end, MongoDB is educating and creating demand for the technology before the sale of a product or platform is even in the picture.By leading with how JSON addresses customer needs and future industry pains, MongoDB is also exhibiting a core tenet of servant leadership, which is to focus on solving problems, not pushing solutions. But servant leadership goes beyond that. It also includes being a mentor to others. After the MongoDB.local event, I was invited to a founder’s event sponsored by infra.nyc. Infra.nyc is a community of startup founders and technology leaders who meet regularly to swap ideas and collaborate on projects supporting the New York City startup community. The September event was sponsored by MongoDB, and CEO Dev Ittycheria hosted a fireside chat sharing the ups and downs of being a startup CEO himself. It was a small but impactful event, and after speaking to many of the CEOs in attendance, as well as a couple of investors, it was clear that Ittycheria’s story was inspiring for this next group of tech leaders. So, while open source is by no means dead, MongoDB has proven that the open-source culture is far more important than the licensing or technology. And more tech firms can learn a lot from MongoDB and its leadership. I believe that by taking an approach more like MongoDB’s, companies could see more trust and adoption of AI technology moving forward. But the increased revenue and stock prices would be nice, too. Moor Insights & Strategy provides or has provided paid services to technology companies, like all tech industry research and analyst firms. These services include research, analysis, advising, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition matchmaking and video and speaking sponsorships. Of the companies mentioned in this article, Moor Insights & Strategy currently has a paid business relationship with IBM , MongoDB and Salesforce .
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