About Open Source

When it comes to making software products, the closed source model is often preferred for economic reasons. Controlling the source code is controlling its usage and distribution, and thus controlling the ensuing business model. It’s a way to reduce competition by preventing imitation, obfuscating your code is also a method to secure your application: in a black box model, vulnerabilities are hidden deeper.

The open source model has different economic advantages. Open source software doesn’t necessarily mean free software. Often, companies developing open source products make a living by providing additional services, such as consulting, managed hosting, or educational content.

Open-sourcing your code allows the production of stabler software with less costs. Developers can collaborate together to solve common problems, with little management and on a voluntary basis. 

It’s also a great marketing opportunity for makers. A product whose release speed is high and whose community remains active is a growing product. The progress made are readily available to everyone thanks to platforms such as Github or Gitlab. This transparency results in increased trust and quality of service.

Collaborators are often users, so the interests between products owners and end-users are more likely to be aligned.

An open-source license is an opportunity to generate creativity, flexibility, and high engagement: anyone can adapt the code to its own needs. It positively impacts the longevity of the source code by bringing more security: breaches are more easily identified by a whole group of people than by a single developer, and the source code can live on forever in a Git repository maintained by the community. Service interruptions are less likely.

Customer support can also be partially delegated to the developer community: bugs can be discussed and fixes can be submitted through push requests.

Source code also has an educational value: obtaining source code is obtaining the solution to its problem, contributing to a better distribution of knowledge, but also the creation of new one.

The parent organization still holds the power to decide how the source code can be used and how it’ll change to keep the product consistent with the overall vision. If the organization fails to address the needs of its users, they can fork their own project, resulting in more innovation.

Open-source is a model of distributed innovation.