Open source has become an absolute trend of the last decade and transformed from an insignificant movement into a global tendency. Notably, it has affected not just individual developers but big technology companies as well. Such giants as Meta, Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Netflix, Twitter, and Uber have been successfully developing and actively using open-source software in their work for years. According to the Sonatype report, in 2021, the demand for open source grew by 73% compared to the previous year.

SoftServe has its own OpenSource platform where anyone can create or contribute to existing projects. I am the coordinator of this platform and in this piece I’d like to discuss, what’s in it for developers? Why would one spend their time writing free code that is available to anyone? How do open source developers make money? Where to look for open source projects and will they have an impact? If you are still asking yourself these questions or just want to understand what is open source and where it came from, keep reading.

What is open source and how did it emerge?

Simply speaking, open source is software with an open code that’s available for everyone. Anyone can review, change, and use this code however they want (and even make money from it). You can barely earn much from it, but the advantages of working with open source for developers are still significant. I’ll tell more about this topic later.

Let’s go back to when this phenomenon emerged. Open source originated much earlier than many think. One can say that its starting point was in the 1950s, when IBM started producing IBM 701 computers that became available to scientific institutions, military and governmental organizations. Yet, when I say "computer," I mean a physical box — for $16,000 a month, an institute was getting just the iron without operating system and software. Scientists and engineers wrote the programs by themselves and shared them with each other. That is, the history of computer software itself begins with open source codding.

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Photo from IBM Archives: The IBM 701

This is how, openly and by joint efforts, in a few years, the community has developed a primitive operating system, Interslip and UCI Lisp programming languages, and RAST compilers. At that time, all software was public and free by default.

In the 1970s, AT&T released the first version of UNIX that became the basis for many modern operating systems such as AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Mac OS X, LynxOS, and others. This OS aimed at the mass market due to its low price and easy transfer from one computer to another that greatly simplified the use of OS at home. It consisted of different modules, each of which was responsible for a separate function and was easy to change.

But the more computers there were, the more open source software there appeared and more people got involved in their development. The question emerged: should it be licensed? So, later, lawyers got their hands on it, and through licenses, copyrights, and trademarks, open source software ceased to be the property of society and became the property of individual companies. The fifth version of UNIX introduced a license for educational institutions, and the next version introduced a license for companies for the first time. They started to make good money on this.

However, there were plenty of "computer enthusiasts" who just loved to program and explore computer capabilities. Richard Stallman was one of them. In the early 1980s, more and more developers were working behind closed doors for private companies, the NDA emerged, and the spirit of collaborative programming faded. However, Stallman believed that the software should be available to the community. And he found a solution by developing his own software and, as an author, permitting its distribution. This is how he founded the GNU project ("GNU's Not Unix") — the software that was suitable for Unix but was free from intellectual property rights that could limit the choice of users.

GNU/Linux that’s usually called simply Linux is one of the greatest examples of open source software. Its core was developed by a Finnish programmer, then a student at the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds. Linux was created as an alternative, free open-source version of the MINIX operating system based on the principles of Unix operation and design. It is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is a copyleft license that allows its owner to use, explore, and modify the software and even sell it. The opposite proprietary license, on the other hand, limits the user's rights to work with the source code.

What’s in open source for developers?

You may ask why would you as a developer write or enhance some code for free and let somebody else earn from it? Of course, if you focus solely on financial profit, open source will be of little use. But look at it from another angle.

For me, as for many other opensourcers, it is a way of knowledge sharing, networking, developing my skills, filling the portfolio, and being a part of an active community.

For beginners, the most obvious advantage is experience. How to prove that you can write code? Open source will come in handy here: just write the code and output it as an open source project or add to someone else's. This way, you’ll not only pump up your hard skills but will also learn to work in a team, plan your tasks, resolve conflicts, and work with feedback — these are the skills that many recruiters are hunting for today.

What’s more, according to the founder of Microverse , "contributing to open source is the most effective job-seeking hack you can take advantage of right now". According to him, while studying in his company, developers are asked to join such projects from day one.

Speaking of a more pumped-up audience, here are the benefits of open source according to Red Hat , an American IT company that develops free software:

Peer review. Code is regularly checked and improved due to the active community.
Transparency. In open source code, you can track all changes and data moving.
Reliability. Proprietary code depends on a single author or company that should improve it, keep it updated, and release new patches. Open source code, on the contrary, lives outside author limitations because, after publication, it is spread within the entire community. Open standards and peer review guarantee regular and well-conducted testing.
Flexibility. It’s one of the principles of open source software that allows you to use code for different needs. Here, you can rely on the community to help and provide peer review as you implement new solutions.
No vendor lock-in. It means that you can take code and use it however and whenever you like.

Many developers work with open source platforms because they have richer libraries of customization and plug-ins created by other programmers. Open source creates an atmosphere of collaboration and community for motivated developers who strive for more. In the end, answering the question how do open source developers make money, some people don't care about money and are just interested in code. They spend their spare time and effort on it because they like to enhance, research, and create something of their own.

Where to look for open source projects?

Technical giants build their own open-source codding platforms that outside developers can contribute to. In particular, such platforms are in Meta and Microsoft. Even NASA has its own open source codding platform named Code.

Some time ago, we’ve created such a platform at SoftServe so that developers inside and outside the company could share knowledge, improve skills, flourish, and create innovations. This idea originated in mid-2018, and, with the support of our associates and management, we’ve managed to launch this initiative. We researched the world experience, interviewed associates, defined the rules and principles of work, and finally created the OpenSource platform. All projects published on the OpenSource website are open and accessible to everyone.

If you want to become a part of the community, you need to provide basic information about yourself in the form on the site. After that, your application will be submitted to a mentor of a particular project or you’ll be offered a list of potentially interesting projects.

You can also add your own project to the platform. For that, you should also fill in the form with the minimum information about yourself, add a project to GitHub, and provide its description. After that, an administrator (in this case, it’s me) makes sure that your code is valid, checks with an architect, verifies whether the project complies with the requirements, and assesses its security. If everything is fine, the administrator adds your project to the site and shares information about it via email, social networks, etc.

The most interesting OpenSource projects

In total, our platform has 41 projects and 46 members — people who are registered on the site and contribute to it. The projects are written in 14 different programming languages (.NET, Bash, C, C #, C ++, CSS, Erland, GO, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Python, Ruby, and Vim Script) and using technologies such as BigData, Data Science, Django, Elixir, Machine Learning, Node.JS, React.JS, Revel, and Ruby on Rails.

Among them, there are two interesting projects that I’d like to draw your attention to.

The first one is the Investment Products Recommendation Engine (IPRE). It is a joint project of SoftServe and Google Cloud that allows one to provide the most accurate personalized investment recommendations. IPRE collects and processes market data on available investment products such as stocks or bonds using BigQuery and Cloud Functions.

The second project is smartparking. It is a smart parking system that allows one to analyze the availability of parking lots using video streams via IP cameras. With machine learning algorithms, the system analyzes images obtained from the cameras. The processed information immediately appears on the screen showing free, occupied, and reserved lots.

To me, it is obvious that open source will keep advancing and, due to its collaborative approach to coding, will drive technology and innovation. Therefore, I am sure that it will engage more and more developers. I, for my part, have the opportunity and desire to develop the platform where they can work on projects together.

We also try to get involved in the development and improvement of current projects with new technologies to help people learn to work with them and grow a community of developers who are capable of creating innovation.