Open-Source Software: The Heart of Progression

When software is developed that provides users unpaid access to its functionality, there is often a lot of work to be done before that category of software becomes genuinely "open." You may have read about our support regarding advertising and "Convenience" paywalls as a means to provide income for services. 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-source software.

Open sourcing, allowing users to read and distribute copies of 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, advance the progress of an application, and help universally advance the field of programming. Open sourcing also often involves making services and software completely free of cost. 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 user base’s trust in an application is often a leading factor in the application’s wide adoption. 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, an application's progress, quality, and even security can be advanced by 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 integrating 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 development community to detect vulnerabilities and fix them at a lightning pace, 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, we must acknowledge the positive impact on 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 original application through bug fixes and forks, but developers could also use segments of the code in their projects, something that is possibly the single most important facet of the internet's progress. 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 free user-facing 3D software, and due to the need for such software,it vastly grew in popularity. Eventually, after the company that created Blender shut down, it split off under the nonprofit Blender Foundation and became open source. It quickly became one of the leading 3D software programs and received hundreds of 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. Although it has yet to be 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 followed in other categories of software.

Code possesses the property of immense reusability, in which sections of code in almost completely different applications can be added to others with minimal changes, saving hours of work. Nearly every open-source project (and even many closed-source projects) is built on a foundation of other similar open-source projects. Without open-source software, 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.