In today’s mobile internet era with wave after wave of innovation, it is the great idea of open source that has laid its solid foundation.
What is Open Source
The concept of Open Source was first proposed and advocated by individual hackers and geeks. This concept aims to promote open software source code and allow software to be freely used and recreated.
With the development of this idea, many open source licenses such as GPL, BSD, MIT, etc. have emerged. It is worth noting that some licenses have stricter regulations, such as being unfriendly to commercial use. But overall, the open and spreading idea of open source has been subverting traditional software development models and profoundly influencing our era.
How Open Source Grows and Influences the World
Initially, I had many questions about open source. From a rough understanding, open source means free, so:
- How do open source software developers make a living?
- How do world-famous open source organizations and communities like Apache and Mozilla survive and become powerful?
Later, I learned that as open source software developers, some have fixed jobs and only develop open source software in their spare time out of interest and hobby, sharing and contributing it to gain more recognition. Some are employed by open source communities and organizations to develop open source software for pay. Others work full-time on their own open source software or products, relying on online donations to survive.
Open source community organizations also rely on donations to maintain the operation of the entire community and release open source software. Then new questions arose:
- Why are people willing to fund a free product?
- Can donations provide stable and continuous financial support?
The answer is that large open source communities can receive stable donations. These donation funds come from individuals who may be users of open source software, appreciate this idea, and hope that a certain software can continue to be updated and released. But most of the funds mainly come from large commercial companies like Google and Apple. Then:
- Why don’t large commercial companies spend money to develop their own products instead of donating to open source communities?
In fact, commercial companies that donate to open source communities mostly benefit from open source software, and the benefits they gain far outweigh the cost of developing similar products themselves. Companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which dominate the mobile internet era, have become the focus of this era thanks to the power of open source. (Click the links to learn more: The Open Source Power Behind Google, The Open Source Power Behind Facebook, The Open Source Power Behind Twitter) After growing strong with the power of open source, these commercial companies give back to the open source community by donating funds and products (open-sourcing their excellent products and giving them to the open source community for continued updates and releases), and even providing personnel support. The reason why open source software is excellent and high-quality is that its code contributors are mostly outstanding developers with excellent technical skills. These developers may come from all over the world, and open source communities organize and collaborate with these developers in a loose and open manner for software development. Commercial companies cannot recruit all the world’s outstanding talents with money. This is why Microsoft’s once popular encyclopedia product Encarta failed in the internet era and was closed by Microsoft in 2009.
Afterword, Collaboration and Sharing
In a sense, the entire development of open source and even the entire development of internet civilization are built on the spirit of collaboration and sharing. Wikipedia, born in the internet era, has a vast amount of content contributed by netizens scattered all over the world. Open source software and communities operate with the spirit of sharing and collaboration. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter also use people’s love for sharing to generate content and maintain user engagement. Content communities like Qiushibaike and Zhihu operate on a model that relies on users sharing their jokes and ideas to create content (commonly known as UGC mode, User Generated Content).
Reprinted with permission: Developer Relations »
