Benefits of Releasing Open Source

Companies release their software as open source for the following purposes.

It Can Be Economically Beneficial

Open source is not an act of charity. When a company releases its software as open source or contributes to open source, it does so because it expects a higher return on investment.

John Nash, a renowned mathematician who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his “cooperative game” theory, proved that cooperation is not a zero-sum game and that, by cooperating, all participants can earn a higher return than what they invested. Open source is the most practical example of this theory.

For instance, Google released Angular (a web application framework), which it had used only internally, as open source, and Angular quickly spread among web developers. Developers used Angular to build many extensions and tools, and Google in turn was able to benefit from those extensions and tools. Although it is not easy to quantify the direct revenue Angular brought to Google, according to LinkedIn’s Job Tag analysis more than 700,000 jobs were created. Considering this job market, we can expect that the product market built on Angular is also quite large.

Can your project expect such a high return on investment as well? If so, start preparing to release it as open source.

It Can Become a Standard

Releasing a project as open source increases the likelihood that it will be adopted as a standard.

When a project becomes the de facto standard in its technical field, more external contributors participate, and the project and its surrounding ecosystem evolve more quickly. This accelerates innovation across the industry and makes it easier to adopt the services and products built using the project.

Take GNU and Linux as an example. GNU and Linux spread rapidly as they were released as open source modeled on the Unix operating system. Linux is now the de facto standard for servers, routers, and connected devices, and its use in consumer electronics is also steadily increasing. As a result, software vendors support Linux and provide tools that are familiar to Linux users (for example, Bash support on Microsoft Windows).

If you release your project as open source, can you expect it to become an industry standard and attract many external contributors? If so, start preparing to release it as open source.

It Can Grow an Ecosystem

When you release a project as open source, others adopt the project and use it to develop their own programs. As a result, they invest not only in their own programs but also in the success of the project. Open source communities include excellent developers who collaborate with one another within a project regardless of the company they belong to. Such developers not only bring diverse perspectives to the project but also allow the ecosystem to grow.

This is an especially effective strategy for projects with an extension mechanism, such as WordPress. WordPress opened up its plugin and theme APIs, forming an ecosystem in which contributors such as developers, designers, and consultants provide a wide variety of add-on features. Because the community provides plugins and themes free of charge or for a fee, WordPress does not have to handle every plugin or design itself. This kind of ecosystem benefits not only WordPress but also community members and end users.

As another example, in 2008 JavaScript was so slow that websites that relied heavily on it were almost unusable. When Google released Chromium as open source, it also released the V8 JavaScript engine. V8 is an engine that compiles JavaScript into machine code before execution and uses a variety of optimization techniques. This greatly improved browser performance, enhancing the user experience of websites, opening the door to web application development, and enabling JavaScript to be used together with server software such as Node.js. Because V8 was released as open source, not only Chrome but the entire ecosystem was able to advance together.

When you release your project as open source, can you expect similar growth of the project and its ecosystem? If so, start preparing to release it as open source.

It Can Help Recruit Excellent Developers

Recruiting is not the primary purpose of open source. However, it is one of the effects that often appears when a company releases software that is widely used internally as open source.

For example, when Google released Bazel, its internal build system, as open source, external developers began to use it as well. As the tool became open source, external people became familiar with it, and the company gained the advantage of being able to choose hires from among external contributors who already know the tool well. Because such people are already familiar with the technology, community building, support, and so on, the training process for putting them to work can be greatly simplified.

Through such open source activities, a company builds a stronger reputation in the community and becomes an attractive workplace for open source developers, enabling it to secure talent.