How Your Company Can Get the Most Out of Open-Source Software
Without open-source software, no company would be nearly as agile and scalable as they are.
Ten years ago, had anyone suggested open-source software would run the backbone of enterprise businesses, they’d have been laughed out of Circuit City and told to head back into their parent’s basement to recharge with a 2 liter of Mountain Dew and a bag of Cheetos.
Today, however, it’s a reality no one can deny. Open-source software runs the majority of software delivery pipelines and backends of the largest companies in the world. According to Fortune Business Insights, Linux (an open-source operating system) dominated the Fortune 500 supercomputers and by the year 2027 businesses should see a quadrupling of open-source usage.
That’s an impressive thought, considering how prominent open-source already is within the world of business tech. Linux already runs the cloud, containers, BigData, IoT, and edge computing. So everyone from retail to offshore software development companies are adopting (and adapting to) open source.
But what do those offshore software developers and enterprise CTOs know that you don’t? They know the ROI of open source software is significant. They also know that, without open-source software, they wouldn’t be nearly as agile and scalable.
Where does that leave you? Are you hesitant to jump on the open-source bandwagon? If so, let’s dive into this particular world of software and find out how your company can get the most out of open-source software.
Hire open-source developers
The first thing your company needs to do is hire developers that are not just familiar with open source software but actually develop open-source projects. As you expand your backend, you’re going to need developers who are intimately familiar with open-source software and how to glue those bits together. Those software engineers are going to need a high level of familiarity with open-source APIs, databases, server software, libraries, and languages.
Your new open-source developers will be instrumental in the growth of your company, as they can leverage pre-existing open-source projects and retool them to perfectly fit your needs. Because your open-source developers are already familiar with the way open-source technology functions, they’ll have a head start in getting your company up-to-speed with software that can help you scale beyond your current capacity.
Adopt Linux as your desktop operating system
At the moment, Windows is probably the dominant desktop operating system within your business. But as your business continues to incorporate open-source technology, it makes perfect sense to take that paradigm shift to the desktop. Why? Because you want an operating system that is as reliable as your backend.
Linux is an incredibly stable and secure operating system. Why would you want to place such a priority on the server-side of your company, but not on the side where the end-user exists? And given much of what we do now is done within a web browser, wouldn’t you want to empower your staff with an operating system that will give them the most stable platform possible? For that, you want Linux.
Contribute back to the community
One of the best ways you can get the most out of open-source is by giving back to the community. Why is that important? The very ethos of open-source is about sharing — it’s a give and take proposition where everyone wins and no one loses. And when companies give back to open-source, that community is able to grow and thrive. Your company becomes another cog in a machine that functions for the greater good.
Open-source software actually depends on companies using, improving, and giving back to the projects the improvements they’ve made. When your open-source developers improve an existing project (and offer their improvements to the community at large), those projects can incorporate those changes and even expand on them. In the end, when an open-source project your company depends on improves, you benefit. So why not give that project a bit of a boost by contributing?
Document everything
This should be a no-brainer, but documentation is a crucial component to getting the most out of open-source software. Why? Because chances are very good your admins and developers will do things with open-source solutions that have never been done before. If you don’t document those unique ways in which you’ve used open-source software, no one will know what you did moving forward.
This should be done on a regular basis. Anytime a change is made, in any single system, it should be documented — and not just by commenting within code. Your software engineers and admins should be keeping well-written documentation that carefully describes how software is used, how it was integrated, and what changes were made to make it happen. All of this documentation can be placed on a company-wide Wiki, so it’s available for all to review.
By documenting everything that has been done, any new developer or administrator that steps into the picture should be able to pick up where their predecessor left off.
Use existing solutions and expand upon them
You might think your developers should create brand new solutions for your company. This is especially so if what you’re doing doesn’t have an equivalent proprietary option on the market. But why make extra work for those developers, especially when there’s an open-source project for nearly every need? And if one project won’t do it, your developers can bring numerous projects together to create something unique that will perform the job to your exact specifications.
One of the important elements of open-source software is that, according to the license that governs the product, users are allowed to alter the software and re-distribute it. So you can download an open-source project, make changes, and make it available to everyone. Or, you can keep those changes to yourself. But remember, giving back to the open-source community is an important means of keeping the ball rolling forward.
Conclusion
You don’t have to fear open-source software. Businesses around the world now depend on software released under the various open licenses (such as the Apache License, BSD License, GPL, LGPL, MIT License, and the Mozilla Public License). In fact, once you start using open-source solutions within your business, you’ll find an entire world of agility, reliability, and possibility has opened up for you.
