Open-Sourcing: The Heart of Progression

When a service is created that opens up a category for free, that may only be a step on a staircase to the freedom of that category of applications. You may have read about our support regarding advertising and "Convenience" paywalls. Although we do support these as a method to support the freedom of a category, they are not the end of the journey to an open internet. The greatest aspiration of The People's Internet is freedom for everybody online, and this means open-sourcing.

Open-sourcing, allowing users to read and distribute your code freely (per The Open Source Definition), is an integral element in the progression of the internet. Such a decision on behalf of creators can encourage users to trust your application, can advance the progress of an application, and can help universally advance the field of programming. Open sourcing also typically involves making programs completely free. If one were to do this, they would be taking a fast track to make a massive positive difference in the experience of users and developers alike.

The trust of a person's application can be a very important aspect in the use of an application. If nothing else, non-trusting users can be an annoyance to the developer, but often loss of trust can be what kills an application. The perception of the application taking user data or engaging in unwanted behavior, even if false, can turn many users away, and open-source software on the client and server side is one of the best ways to avoid these negative perceptions.

In addition, the progress, quality, and even security of an application can be advanced by it being open-sourced. The distributable and modifiable qualities of open-source software allow for the base software to be developed at a much higher rate, either by separate user-created branches of the software or by integration of user additions. Despite the common perception to the contrary, open-sourcing can also majorly help the security of software. User oversight of the code allows the opportunity for vulnerabilities in the code to be detected and fixed at a lightning pace by the development community, especially at trial versions before the vulnerability is released to users. Even if there are malicious parties that successfully take advantage of a vulnerability on a mainstream version through access to the code, the number of people developing the service will vastly outnumber the malicious parties and will likely already have discovered the issue, and the lowered reliance on central infrastructure will reduce the exploitation opportunities.

Finally, the progression of the internet as a whole. When something is open-sourced, the code is made available to the public. This doesn't just mean to users, this also means to developers. Some developers may use this code to improve the application, but segments of the code could also be used by developers in their own projects, something that is possibly the single most important facet of the internet's progression. Applications can build upon other applications, and a single open-source project can help make massive areas of the internet open to all users.

An example we can provide of the success of a well-executed open-source software is Blender. Blender started as a simple open-source 3D software, however, it filled many niches that other software could not, even filling many niches that closed-source software couldn't. Not only did it relatively quickly become one of the leading 3D softwares, it got thousands of dollars in funding from companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Intel. Blender has also diversified into other areas, such as simple 2D animation and video sequencing/editing, and although it is not known for user-friendliness, it has massively improved in recent years. Blender is a shining example of the potential of open-source software and what it can accomplish, an example that could vastly improve the internet if widely followed.

Code possesses the unique property of almost complete reusability, in which sections of code in almost completely different applications can be switched out into others with minimal changes, saving hours of work. Almost every open-source project (and even many closed-source projects) is built on a foundation of other similar open-source projects. Without open-sourcing, the internet would almost be unimaginable relative to what we know today. The fact that so much of the internet relies on a system such as open-sourcing is one of our greatest victories, yet we were not even a part of it. We hope you can join us in advancing this victory to greater heights.