This is GitHub. The largest host of source
code. You can take someone else's code and use it in your project. Or you can
just use this software for free. It's called Open Source.
100 million developers worldwide contribute to open source. Google, Microsoft,
Nvidia and many other global companies. But what is the point? Why do people and
companies invest in free software? What open source is about? Voluntary or
business? Let's find out together. First, a few words about what open source is.
Open source is a software that is designed to be publicly accessible. So, anyone can
see, modify, or distribute it. It's a bit like a recipe that's shared publicly.
Anyone can see the ingredients and steps, can try to make it themselves,
adjust, or share it with others. But why do people develop programs and put them in the public? In addition to creating these
programs, they need to maintain, develop, update, and provide customer support. And
this is at least time, effort, and costs. Today, all companies and people are
obsessed with intellectual property rights, patents, trade secrets, and NDAs. So that no
competitor would find out what they are doing, let alone know their code. And here is the code.
Here you go, you can use it. What's the catch? When they say "Open Source," the first images
that usually come to mind are these cool guys. But Open Source did not start with them.
We will come back to them a little later. Open source was born in an academic
environment. And that is not a surprise. All scientific knowledge is free. There are
no laws of physics under NDA. In science, it has always been encouraged when scientists
share and openly discuss their findings, because theories and technologies
are based on previous findings. Who do you think has become one of the
leader in making money on the software? Microsoft. In 1975, Paul Allen read an article
in a magazine about the new personal computer and told Gates about it. Gates contacted the
president of that company and told him that he and his friend were working on the software
for that computer. But in fact Gates and Allen had nothing to do with the computer, just
emulating the processor. Fake it till you make. The president of the company invited them
to his office, they demonstrated a working basic language interpreter, and a few
weeks later Paul and Bill were already partnered with MITS and got royalties on the
copies sold. The company was named MicroSoft. And it would seem that the period of open source
is gone. Computers became private, people realized that they could make serious money on software.
How has open source survived to this day? Remember we mentioned these guys? You may have heard about the Linux operating
system. They are the ones who did it. Stallman was a developer at the MIT AI Lab. He was
disappointed by the move to non-free software, in which users could not get access to or modify
the code. He decided to create a completely free and open operating system. Stallman
developed many utilities that an operating system needed. However, one major component
of the system was still missing: the kernel. Linus Torvalds, a Finnish computer science
student, independently began to develop a free kernel known as Linux. The puzzle came together.
The Linux kernel with the Stallman system GNU, provides a fully functional and free operating
system. GNU/Linux, or commonly just Linux. By the way, this is not a totally geek story,
Linux is used today by at least 33 million people. Do you know these guys? They built the
most popular browser of the 1990s. Netscape Navigator. But when Internet Explorer came
out, it was pushing Netscape out of the market, because it was distributed for free with
Windows. As a result, Netscape had no choice but to close. Explorer grabbed 90% of the market.
Except for one last thing, they decided to open the source code of their browser. Later it
became the foundation for Mozilla Firefox. Okay. This all sounds like a social movement
against code privatization and for freedom of Information, knowledge sharing, etc. So
that means that open source is all about volunteering and nonprofit? Or not?
Well, for example, these companies. They have built their business entirely on
open-source. And no, they are not non-profit. Companies usually use the following
business models or mix of them 1. Support or Professional Services. In most
cases, the company does not own the technology, but borrows open source code and provides various
support services for money. Have you tried turning it off and on again? Red Hat was one of the first
companies to monetize open source. Red Hat makes money on subscription for the support, training
and integration services that help customers. Customers pay one set price for unlimited
access to services and to 24/7 support. The company was very successful. in
2018 the company was bought by IBM. 2. Hosting or SaaS. Next approach
is – be my guest. Classic Software as a Service model. WordPress.com is the best
example. It is an open source website builder. Almost half of all websites are based
on wordpress. You can build and manage your website for free. But it has to be
hosted on a web server. And Wordpress can host it for you, for additional cost.
And the 3. Premium or open-core. Only part of the product is available for free. The rest of the
features are chargeable. This model is the most popular and one of the examples is mongoDB.
It is easy-to-use database software. They started in 2007 with a dream to build a flexible
and scalable database. Two years later they went open source. They believed in the power
of community. And the gamble paid off. Developers loved MongoDB. And start using it
from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Later, MongoDB started offering commercial services.
Less common business models are partnerships (like Google pays royalty to Mozilla for
being default search engine), branded merchandise, crowdsourcing and donations.
But open source is used also for hiring, marketing, PR. The State of Enterprise
Open Source report said that 82% of IT leaders are more likely to select a vendor
who contributes to the open source community. Did you know that without Linux and open source
software there would be no Google. Whaaaat? In its early days, Google, like many small
companies, used open source software, particularly Linux, to build its infrastructure.
As Google grew, it continued to utilize open source and contributed back to the community.
Another huge open source contributor is Microsoft. Acquired GitHub, and have open-sourced several
of their technologies. Microsoft positioned itself as a leader in the open source community,
enhancing its brand reputation among developers. NVIDIA encourages developers to use their hardware
and software. For example, NVIDIA's CUDA toolkit, which is used for parallel computing
on NVIDIA graphics processing units, includes several open source libraries.
Alibaba open-sourced several of key technologies.They do it in order to promote
the use of their technology on a global scale. But it is not only companies that benefit from
open source. The key players are developers. Millions of guys around the world who have built
a strong community. Where you can share knowledge, look up, get and give advice or help
to improve, if you know how. And all your activity on Github is essentially your
CV (everybody can see all the achievements, comments, creations, where your comments
were accepted into production or not) And yet, open source - volunteering or business?
It seems that everyone has their own agenda here. And there is both social motivation (like
knowledge sharing) and a desire to make money If it was interesting, like and
subscribe. Let me know what you think about open source in
the comments. Stay tuned!
