Earlier this year, Google unveiled a pre-training model and fine-tuning code for Big Transfer (BiT), a computer vision model for deep learning. According to Google, Big Transfer allows anyone to perform optimally on a given task, even if there are only a few tag images per class. BiT is just one of the tech giant’s many freely available products. It’s not uncommon for big names in the tech world to release free and useful open source software. So why would big tech do this?
In the late ’90s, when the Open Source Initiative was new, the idea of making Source code public was widely considered insane. After all, proprietary software is the standard, and the company or organization concerned will do everything it can to protect the software. But by 2020, the concept of open source has changed dramatically, and now open source thinking is becoming mainstream.
With so many open source technology enterprises (organizations) in the world, some of which make hundreds of millions of dollars a year or more, The billion-dollar club includes big names like Red Hat, MongoDB, Cloudera, MuleSoft, Hashicorp, Databricks (Spark), and Confluent (Kafka).
In addition to these high-profile acquisitions and investments, even traditional tech giants like Google and Facebook are pushing open source strategies, which shows how important open source is for tech companies to innovate and build and maintain developer communities. This applies to Flutter vs React Native, Tensorflow vs PyTorch, and Kubernetes. Google and Facebook are more focused on developers and consumers in the open source space, while Microsoft and AWS are more focused on enterprises.
It is said that open source is a catalyst for continuous innovation. This makes sense, as open source is at the heart of continuous innovation. When a business or organization has more developers from different companies and backgrounds, its coverage of technology innovation increases exponentially. Companies can identify potential problems in code from different perspectives, and in the process learn how to use collective intelligence to solve problems.
Because of open source, the masses can use systems built by open source developers, and vast numbers of users can suggest improvements of all kinds. If the main team behind open source systems is the technology companies themselves, then the project will go in the direction they want, and civilian users will contribute a lot to the project.
“Open source is an enabler of innovation, enabling organizations to quickly access a global talent pool and tools to develop secure, reliable and scalable software.” Maneesh Sharma, managing director of Github India, said, “The organisations that are most effective in accelerating their business transformation are those that are turning to open source software development to succeed in the rapidly changing digital world.”
“Today, 99 percent of all software projects are built using open source software,” Maneesh said. Open source has revolutionized software development and created an interconnected community of developers that is highly collaborative and extends around the world.”
In addition, open source helps build a rich developer community. If a technology company does not have a tradition of open source, its chances of building a good relationship with the developer community will be low. Big companies like Microsoft, IBM, or Google have a lot of people pushing their code so that every developer can spell it out. And open source means open and transparent release cycles and roadmaps, which encourages more enterprise effort and initiative.
With open source projects, many users may band together to help companies develop forward-looking projects and products that compete with other companies. This is good for companies that want to build a better brand and gain the respect of others.
Their final products are often mature versions of open source software, which means they are more valuable. In one sense, tech companies and consumers can rest assured that the products have been verified by thousands of users, so there will be few problems, and if not, they will be fixed immediately.
Operating in an open source environment pushes a company to become a leader in technology construction and development. This is done through the collaboration and contributions of open source software users and developers. Companies leading open source projects can gain a deeper understanding of how technology is built and where it is going and why.
If a company has opened up its cloud/cloud native project, then it can see the future of the cloud and cloud native, which is an important part of ensuring that it continues to advance in the technology space. It also means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you create a new product. As technology drives innovation, the market comes to expect certain features that differentiate companies.
For tech companies, open source isn’t always the preferred strategy. However, an open source strategy is essential in today’s market environment, and in specific business use cases like Red Hat, open source can be profitable. But in the case of AI, it is often both advanced and unpredictable, making it difficult for researchers to monetize their ideas and fund research.
For example, OpenAI was originally a non-profit research lab that changed its stance on open source when it partnered with Microsoft. A year later, they say they are doing all of their software innovation through commercial apis rather than open source. The group had been concerned that its next-generation model could be misused.
In addition, large companies like Apple or Microsoft, while very active in open source, actually only have a small part of their software product that is open source, including libraries and tools. This is a tiny fraction of the overall open source ecosystem compared to other companies.
“At the end of the day, our primary concern is to ensure that ai benefits everyone. We see developing commercial products as one of the ways to make sure we have enough money to succeed.” OpenAI said in a recent blog post about the launch.
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