Alexis Richardson, Weaveworks

Alexis Richardson co-founded a company in 2014 called Weaveworks, which created an open source GitOps project called Flux CD. In February, the company ceased operations, despite having gained new customers in 2023. Among the events that precipitated the closure of the business were acquisition talks with a larger company that fell through "at the 11^th hour," according to a post by Richardson on LinkedIn.

Weaveworks is one example of a company associated with a flourishing open source project – Flux CD continues under the CNCF – that ultimately couldn't make the business side work. Richardson gives his take on what happened with the company and how the CNCF could help businesses like it in the future, as well as what he's got planned next.