Open source software turns 20

Knoll: It's no longer a niche technology within the developer community – it is now an acceptable technology model for the business world, and is being used by organizations of all types and sizes for all kinds of projects. To illustrate that, over the past years we’ve seen some of the biggest tech giants, such as Google and Microsoft, embrace open source for their own businesses.

 

Knoll: Releasing the source code for an application was first adopted by the research sector and universities, and as such, it had quite a narrow focus in its infancy. A formal definition of what open source is was first attempted 20 years ago with the founding of the Open Source Initiative. This definition has so far nicely passed the test of time, and I don't think its definition has changed since then. What has changed dramatically, however, is the understanding of how to utilize open source in businesses and how companies can engage in different open source projects.

 

Knoll: I’d say Linux was the thing that opened the gates to wider adoption of open source. Linux changed the landscape because it was that one missing piece of the open source ecosystem: the operating system. And with the introduction of Linux, by the mid-1990’s you could run everything on top of Linux as a running open sourced system: email, web browser, etc.

 

Knoll: Open source can radically transform how a company develops and maintains their products. The most important thing to realize, however, is that while open source doesn't have a direct cost associated with it (as you can simply download and use it), using it does not come for free. As opposed to commercially supported products, open source software does not come with support. There's no company taking liability for using it, either. More importantly, there's the cost of keeping your software stack up to date, which often requires getting involved in the open source software you are using. Without that involvement, companies run considerable risks in regard to possible problems or security issues their software might have due to the usage of open source software. In the end, this means that using open source software comes at a cost, but instead of licensing costs, the price is usually paid in employee resources: having people who know the software and are ideally contributing to the open source project.

 

Knoll: Open source has a brighter future than when it started, and it will be very interesting to see how it continues to evolve – for example, we’re now seeing that major open source projects are starting to be dominated by one company (such as Google), while traditionally, an open source project would have been collaborated on by many companies and developers. We’ve also seen open source picked up by some companies that had traditionally been quite closed (such as Microsoft), so we’re likely to see open source be adopted by other companies and industries we may not have expected. But regardless of the path open source takes moving forward, it has been an overwhelming success since its introduction decades ago.