Open Source For The Win
Tech and specifically Information Technology is the infrastructure on which our modern world is built. A lot like how the previous age was built by more conventional infrastructure i.e. power lines, rail roads and such. But the infrastructure of the previous age was simpler to understand and people caught on very soon. Things are different with tech. Tech products and services are easy to use and extremely difficult to understand and almost impossible to develop for most of us. People just don’t care how it is that Netflix can work seamlessly on all their devices, they just care that its got all their favorite content. Tech companies offer services sure, and they make sure what they offer is top class but the data they collect in return for these services is often times something the user had no idea was any part of the transaction.
Open Source has the potential to solve all the problems that come with big tech. It allows smaller companies to deliver quality products that can compete with big tech and give users an alternative. In a way many startups with open source and a vision for privacy and security at their core are like renewable energy competing with oil giants. They’ve got a long way to go but they’re certainly onto something. Open source projects range from elaborate backend frameworks to stunning frontend development tools and offer solutions to extremely complex and IT problems. But you can’t just use open source technology to get what you want. You have to contribute too, and that doesn’t always mean you have to write code you can also contribute with documentation and testing. Open source is built on the basis of community and community is what makes it work.
Big tech also understands the threat open source poses to their business models and to counter that they’re not just donating millions to open source projects, their engineers are also actively committing code to these projects. A lot of these tech giants also have to thank open source projects like Linux and Git to their success. So from their point of view they’re just giving back to the community that allowed them to be the giants that they are today. But big tech has been pretty busy making billions so we can’t really be sure what’s on their mind. Also as the name suggests “Big Tech” has no shortage of power. And you know what they say: “Absolute power, corrupts absolutely”.
Open source model for software and hardware development works, and it’s time we democratize the tech industry by developing products and services with a focus on the values we believe in, like privacy and security to start. This way we might just start to take back control of the industry that runs the world.
