Why you should open source your website
You probably already know that we are proponents of open source software at DADI — we develop the majority of our products in the wild on GitHub.
We believe in transparency and the benefit of having an extra set of eyes on our output, welcoming outside suggestions and criticism. Our enterprise clients also enjoy the advantage of not being ‘locked-in’ with proprietary products — most developers can work with our applications due to our commitment to open standards.
About a year ago we decided to make the repositories for our web services site and our developer documentation publicly available — and we and haven’t looked back since.
Here are some benefits open-sourcing your site might provide to your technology business.
Provides a live example for the community
Especially relevant for us at DADI; we build all our public-facing sites in our own technology. This gives developers and potential clients real-world, practical examples of our tech in action without having to download and install the product. Doing this shows that you have enough faith in your own technology to use it yourself.
Crowdsource your copy editing
Dealing with spelling and grammar mistakes are a part of the lifecycle of any website — stuff always seems to slip through through. We’ve been surprised a few times when internet strangers send pull requests for reasonably small content errors. This is a benefit for community developers as they get the credit on their Github profile for contributing to another public repository 🏅. It is also a nice feeling knowing people are reading your content so carefully!
Showcase your team
GitHub is great for showing and discussing code edits in a nice sharable interface. Furthermore, every line of code can be traced back to a specific individual. Just like having your team speak at conferences and write articles (ahem) it raises the profile of your team — something which benefits the reputation of your company. It also encourages your team to write beautiful code the ‘right’ way, rather than taking shortcuts.
Illustrate your commitment to transparency
We are moving on from an age of closed and selfish business practices — many realise it is better to run a business like a family and show there are fellow humans on the other side. Those worried about what you are doing with their data and whether you’re tracking them can now see exactly how the cogs are working when they interact with your service — and the developers in your audience can audit your site for you.
A note about licensing & sensitive data
It’s worth pointing out you might want to choose your licensing carefully when you take this step and also be extremely careful about what you commit to a public repository — remember it’s not easy to delete or change a git history and we’ve seen cases of bots trawling public repos for private API keys.
