The world today is moving forward in an open-source, includes most of the software that empowers the world's largest companies, encryption used to protect our data is also open to the public. Any user with internet access can download the source code behind Google search, Cryptocurrency ( Bitcoin), Amazon Alexa, or Kubernetes (K8S) to use it as the building block for a new project. Most interestingly, this open-source software was created collaboratively and maintained by millions of publishers called as freelancers from competing technology companies. This is how the world of open-source software where the code is written and shared freely when people catch a bug or see an opportunity to improve can propose a change to the current code and thus contribute to other major global software projects.
But this model has never been the same. In the early days of the internet throughout the 1990s, affiliate software proliferated. Microsoft even went so far as to label open-source information as infringing on intellectual property rights. Open-source software was only developed to be maintained by a few volunteers who thought it was cool.
Now that open source has taken over the world, Fortune 500 companies Google, Microsoft, Amazon, AT&T, Verizon have started opening their projects. Microsoft has completely changed its mind and is now seen as a leader in space of pivoting open source technologies and in 2016 the US government even promised to open so at least 20% of all is a new development trend.
Origin of Open Source
The tale goes that in the 1970s Massachusetts Institute of Technology artificial intelligence lab printer used to regularly jam. Then a staff program Richard Matthew Stallman stone, alternated source code so that when problems arose it would send a message to everyone in the lab saying go fix the printer. When the LAB finally got a new printer, Stallman requested the code since the Code was proprietary, he got refused and got upset and events lead him in quitting the Job and Launched the project GNU Operating system. Which ultimately lead to creating a new operating system called in 1983 called GNU. Stallman also spearheaded the free software movements with the help of the Free Software Foundation.
In the 1990s proprietary software still dominates. In 1991 open-source operating system Linux was released unceremoniously. The first versions of OS included many GNU projects but have only been used by hobbyists looking for an alternative to Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS. Linux gained momentum throughout the decade as large companies took advantage of its convenience and adjusted the software to their specific needs. NASA Dell and IBM have all been using the platform for over a century.
Raise Of Open Source
Today the growth of the open-source platform has been very rapid, with about 10,000 lines of new code being developed every day and 5000 lines of code being changed and about 8000 lines being deleted. The fastest and most effective software development process in history.
During the 1990s open-source projects were gaining popularity such as the database management system (MySQL), the Perl programming language, Web hosting using Apache. By the end of the century, the growth of this technology has not been noticed since these are completely implemented by enthusiasts only in hand full of Linux personal computers. During this era personal computers where dominated by Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS.
In 2008, however, Google released Android devices running a modified version of Linux, and suddenly the operating system exploded into the smartphone market. Today it is still overwhelmed with the amount of innovation that is happening in that system which uses apple mac/ios or Android. Today they are using over 2.5 billion active devices Android. As Google's relied heavily on open source technologies to build products and platforms quickly, and as they demonstrated whether they knew it or not, it's amazing that they relied on the fast open source community to manage the software. Since these huge projects need to be shared and repository. GitHub's response to open source in 2008 was an important stand.
Bright and Promising Future for Open-Source
With this majority of the world adopting open-source technologies, Github provided a platform as a service to save the code into repositories and gained huge popularity. As of 2018 Microsoft, one of the biggest Tech Giant’s has acquired GitHub and commitment to developing more open source technologies. Since the acquisition by Microsoft, GitHub added 50 million projects in 2018/2019, it has expanded dramatically beyond the passion in one community and leading large companies to develop more open source projects in the house. Google is leading the way with the collaboration of over 30000 projects in 2018-2019. The popularity and ease of Open source technologies are leading to a reduction in the popularity of proprietary software. It expects open-source development and further investment of the new norm.