Open Source (soon) rules the world

Open source is for everyone

In 2011, Marc Andreessen stated: "Software is eating the world." Perhaps the father of Netscape Navigator - the most successful web browser of the early 1990s - already suspected back then that it would be primarily open source software that would take all bastions by storm: Every day, quite a few OSS projects see the light of day and invite millions of private developers and corporate IT experts to contribute on platforms like GitHub or GitLab. Even Andreessen's Netscape Navigator, originally distributed as a commercial product, is still popular today as open source under the name Mozilla Firefox.

Open source is for everyone. This maxim is the recipe for success and makes the users of OSS independent of providers of proprietary software. Companies that rely on open source enjoy a number of advantages. One glaring one is the cost savings for expensive licenses. Those who are looking for more individual solutions and for whom open source software "off the shelf" is not enough are also in luck: The open programming interfaces (APIs) enable virtually limitless expansion. The prerequisite, however, is to invest your own capacities in the further development of the software.

Many companies make their own resources available to the project community free of charge. Of course, this investment is not pure altruism, but pays off in the end through external labor from other parts of the community: The open source idea is based on the principle of give and take. Most successful open source projects therefore have a strong and diverse community. 

This colorful mix of impulses is precisely the reason why groundbreaking innovations in promising fields such as edge computing, big data and machine learning often originate in the free developer communities. Probably the best-known machine learning platform, TensorFlow, is open source. Apache Kafka, the most widely used software for processing data streams, is also open source and is the de facto standard in the Big Data space. One example of the power of open source to get even competitors to cooperate is provided by the automotive sector. Under the umbrella of the nonprofit Eclipse Foundation, major automakers are working with technology groups and independent developers on an open source software platform for advanced driving assistants and autonomous driving. It wasn't too long ago that such collaboration among fierce competitors in an industry was still unthinkable.

The future is open source

Despite its versatility, the operation of open source software is sometimes very complex. In particular, setting up and operating a data infrastructure based on OSS therefore often presents companies with major challenges. Managed Platforms offer a solution to this problem. They combine a range of open source services and simplify the management of data infrastructures, for example: companies can install and scale the tools at the touch of a button, and management is carried out via a uniform user interface. Such platforms are particularly powerful if they rely on machine learning mechanisms under the hood.

The innovative power of the open source community is gigantic. The once sworn community of ridiculed idealists has developed into a gigantic think tank with millions of participants. No single company can compete with this concentrated innovative power. Nor are there any serious attempts to do so. It is therefore not a question of whether open source will conquer the world, but how soon.