Has the once vibrant and much-loved cloud-native community lost its spark? What was once an ecosystem fueled by collaboration and curiosity now feels increasingly defined by Slack channels, swag drops, and conference booths.

Despite an explosion of meetups, and events, audiences are thinning. Community fatigue is real and vendor influence often overshadows genuine grassroots participation.

Contribution activity has slowed, and several once-thriving open-source projects are experiencing a contributor drought. End-user organizations and sponsors that once championed community contributions are now scaling back, leaving critical projects struggling to sustain.

This talk takes a candid look at the past, present, and possible future of the open source community. Through data and insights from a few popular OSS projects we’ll explore the patterns behind this shift and what it means for the sustainability of open collaboration in the years ahead.