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Erika Heidi for DigitalOcean

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Tell us your Thoughts About Open Source

Open source software is everywhere, powering applications and gadgets of all sizes, all over the world. If you work with technology, and especially if you are a developer, you are certainly using a wide range of open source software on a daily basis. You probably have used GitHub to check out some code or to find out how to use a certain library / API. But have you ever asked yourself why so many people around the world dedicate so much time to building and contributing to open source projects?

We want to hear from you. Have you ever contributed to open source? What was your main motivation for doing that? Did it have a positive impact on your career? What was your biggest challenge?

We will be sending a limited edition Sammy sticker to everyone who participates in our newest Currents survey about Open Source. Take a few minutes to share your thoughts about this subject and help us understand and report back on the state of open source in 2019. This will be just in time for the upcoming Hacktoberfest.

open source sammy

Additionally, we welcome anyone who would like to share their #OpenSourceStory either on Twitter or by leaving a comment in this post. We'll feature the best comments on our social media channels in order to bring visibility to the benefits — as well as the struggles — of open source work!

Top comments (9)

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areahints profile image
Areahints

I never really saw myself as a developer until I switched to linux. Don't get me wrong, Windows is fantastic, but I never really programmed with it. With my first Ubuntu, I spent at least 60% of my time on stackoverflow trying to unmess the stuff I'd messed up. I found myself using nano a lot, saving git and bash snippets on my phone and sites like hackerrank and codewars became very interesting to me.

When I made the connection was when I started discovering that most softwares I used on windows(which I would crack because I still can't afford to pay for it) had free alternatives on Ubuntu, I always wanted to understand why it was free and this led to me trying to understand open source. Nowadays when I search for plugins and softwares. I always include the term open source, Most results are usually small-knit communities with 2 devs Max and a lot of willing users. Small things like helping out with documentation and reporting bugs go a long way.

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drsensor profile image
૮༼⚆︿⚆༽つ

Surprisingly most well known open-source software (especially desktop apps) consumes less memory than the proprietary one.

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jmplourde profile image
Jean-Michel Plourde

At my internship I used some open source tools to integrate into existing projects. It made me learn a lot about the process of collaboration and I contributed a bit on a library error message fix that someone beat me to it by 8 minutes. I also had to learn about the different open sources licenses and what it implies for a project. Open source is great because you have access to a lot of code that often use good practices.

I also had the chance to work with colleagues that have tons of experience in open source and who contribute a lot to open source projects or have their own. It really inspires me and hopefully I'll make some majore open source contributions.

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maphew profile image
matt wilkie

Open source has community. People who freely share what they know, and are happy when someone learns from them and makes something else new and maybe better. Of all its wonderful features I treasure the people and the sharing most of all.

True, some projects collect arrogant personalities who seem to exist only to make others feel small, but that happens outside of OS too.

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itachiuchiha profile image
Itachi Uchiha

People confused about free and open-source software.

For example, Facebook published an article about React's license. Developers reacted to Facebook's decision.

The main point is here, open-source software can be forked but can't be redistributed. Beside of this, with free software, you can do whatever you want.

You can change codes, redistribute, etc.

These are my thoughts.

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jacobherrington profile image
Jacob Herrington (he/him)

Hey Erika!

I actually wrote about this earlier this week: dev.to/jacobherrington/open-source...

I'm an Open Source maintainer and OSS has been a huge part of my life for the last year. I love it and will be continuing the practice of contributing and maintaining as long as I'm writing code 🤠

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jacobherrington profile image
Jacob Herrington (he/him)

Deny

Haha, I have thwarted the FBI once again!

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stereobooster profile image
stereobooster

This is an awesome question. The answer depends on which point of view to take.

Developer

If you work at your job on the open-source

  • it means that your contributions will be visible better than any CV would be able to tell.
  • It means that you don't have to leave your beloved project behind when you switch jobs
  • it means it won't die if the company decides to discontinue to work on it

Open-source is great because you can use it for free (most of the time)

  • which means you don't need management approval to use it at work
  • which means that you can learn it online for free (compared to proprietary software and PaaS)

You can read source code and learn from the author - see real-life code, not educational examples.

Company

Open-source is great because it is free (most of the time). Sometimes it may cost to pay developers to support solution based on open-source, but I would say in general it is economically good anyway.

Open-source can be a safe bet because when you use propriety soft, you depend on other company

  • which can stop supporting product
  • can be slow on delivering new features, bugfixes
  • can be forced to stop working with you because of law (for example, US sanctions)

With open-source on the other hand, you are safe, because if you really depend on some soft you can fork it and use it.

You can sell open-source as PaaS, which will give you immediate profit almost without any effort. This is what AWS doing for hosted MySQL, Redis, PostgreSQL, etc.

If a company produces open-source it is more attractive for developers, because they will have a chance to work with open-source.

Open-sourcing something may give you free testers and sometimes free labor. Some companies use open-source as a hiring process, instead of the home task they ask to contribute to their open-source projects.

Humanity

Open-source has a great impact on economics. Open-source and free software enabled a lot of growth, a lot of IT business exist because there exists an open-source solution, they wouldn't be able to sustain without it. For example, Linux and nginx which serving 80% of whole internet traffic. Git is the part of Github success. Etc.

Open-source enables scientific research. No need to pay for soft makes research cheaper.

Companies have no need to produce the same propriety product, no need to waste time and resource. Instead, they can work one product - big corporations contribute to Linux and other big open-source. Imagine that instead, each company would support its own crappy OS.

Maintainers

The most interesting bit. Often maintainers get nothing for their work (unless this is their day job).

There are very famous open-source maintainers, for example, Linus Torvalds, Yukihiro Matsumoto, etc., which get a lot of fame praise (probably a bit more money, because of status), but most of the open-source maintainers get nothing. No fame. No money.

There is a strange idea that open-source will make you famous or respectable. It can happen, but only if you make a very popular project.

There is a long-standing problem of how to make open-source sustainable, for example, we should make special licenses which will force big companies donate-back.

Or maybe we can pay open-source maintainers from tax money, and add tax for tech companies (the same way as we pay for roads - if you have a car, you should pay road tax).

There is this donate button on the Github, but I don't think of it as a solution. If you are a social person, you can get money with it, but otherwise...

PS

I have so many ideas on the subject, maybe miss something

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chrisachard profile image
Chris Achard

The biggest challenge for me was maintaining momentum after the initial excitement wore off. Still not sure how to crack that :)