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Talk Intermediate

The Plane Story: Building the Fastest-Growing Open Source Continuum Project

Approved
Session Description

Plane is one of the fastest-growing open-source platforms reshaping the fundamentals of work and project management software. This session explores the journey of Plane — from its early days as a lean, focused tool to its evolution into a widely adopted and community-driven system with deep developer engagement.

At the heart of this story is the creation of a new sustainability model for open source: the Open Continuum. Unlike conventional open-core or foundation-led approaches, the Open Continuum emphasizes a balance between modular monetization and open infrastructure, allowing both product and community to scale together without compromise.

The talk highlights key inflection points in Plane’s development, including architectural decisions, cultural shifts toward openness, and the strategic use of developer tooling and community collaboration. It also introduces OpenWorkLang, an open standard designed to bring true interoperability across project and work management tools — enabling consistent, portable representations of issues, documents, calendars, and beyond. This session offers insights for open-source founders, contributors, and architects looking to build sustainable ecosystems while preserving the core values of openness and developer-first design.

Relevance to Guidelines:

This talk focuses on the Plane’s journey from FOSS to COSS. Alongside we will walk through

technical journey and architectural evolution of Plane, a fast-growing open-source project

management platform. It emphasizes:

● The key engineering and design choices that enabled Plane to scale rapidly

● The development of the Open Continuum model — a new, sustainable approach to

building open-source products

● The creation and intent behind OpenWorkLang, an open schema for organizing work

data across tools

● Insights into building community-driven, modular open infrastructure

The talk is about the journey of Plane, learning on the way and technical decisions made. It

avoids any sales or marketing narrative. It is designed for contributors, maintainers, and

entrepreneurs in the FOSS space.

Key Takeaways

● How Plane grew into a successful open-source project

● Understanding the Open Continuum model for sustainable FOSS

● Lessons on balancing velocity with community contribution

● The vision and technical foundation of OpenWorkLang

● Building for interoperability in modern productivity tools

References

https://github.com/makeplane/plane
https://plane.so/open-source
https://plane.so/manifesto
https://openworklang.com/

Session Categories

Story of a FOSS project - from inception to growth
Knowledge Commons (Open Hardware, Open Science, Open Data etc.)
Technology architecture
Which track are you applying for?
Main track

Speakers

Vamsi Kurama
CEO | Plane

Vamsi Kurama founded Plane out of a conviction that project management should be progress-driven, not just productivity-focused. Drawing on his deep background in software development and agile methodologies, he envisioned a tool that helps teams move work forward—tracking issues, epics, and roadmaps in a way that feels natural and impactful.


As CEO of Plane, Vamsi brings a strong foundation in computer science and a proven ability to design scalable, reliable applications. His leadership is rooted in a simple philosophy: progress is the true measure of success. Guided by this belief, he is reshaping the landscape of modern work through open-source software, creating environments where teams don’t just stay busy—they thrive on meaningful progress.

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/vamsi-kurama/
Vamsi Kurama

Reviews

Journey of Open-Source Entrepreneurship will be inspiring to listen to. Seems like there is technical depth in the talk with respect to engineering decisions. Suggesting the proposer not go high level in the talk, as technical depth is expected.

Reviewer #1 Approved

I believe that this will need a long Q&A time, as this is a unique model and is likely to stir up controversy that should be addressed.

This COSS thing is likely what will stand out the most in this talk. You could drop it and just talk about the technical stuff, but if you want to talk about the Open Continuum model you will need to thoroughly explain it at the expense of talking about Plane.

Reviewer #2 Approved

Plane is a well known software package that has seen rapid development. The broader talk proposal seems fine. However, there are some concerns...

OWL (open work lang) is set to become Open Source in Q3 - it's not open source now. This makes it hard to evaluate it. If the plan is to release it during the conference then this should be discussed.

Open continuum model as a term isn't seen in their open source page (https://plane.so/open-source), which seems odd. Is this the next step of their journey or a new term coined recently ?

Reviewer #3 Not Sure

Plane is an impressive success story, and this talk can start relevant conversations around FOSS, sustainability, community, specifically in the Indian context.

Reviewer #4 Approved
Reviewer #5 Approved

It may be interesting to know about Open Continuum model and Open Work Lang( though i have no clue what it means)from some experienced Open Source project like Plane. It would be interesting to know why they took this route and their proposal for building a commercial product on opensource

Reviewer #6 Approved

The talk focuses on Open Continuum model that is the focus of this talk. It is important for budding startup enthusiast to learn from their story on how to monetize an open source project.

Reviewer #7 Approved