Insights from our OpenSource roundtable v.1

DataSeries < > MindsDB | VRT270520

In May, DataSeries, an OpenOcean led initiative hosted a Virtual Roundtable together with MindsDB about the “Future of OpenSource”. The session was moderated by the Co-Founders of MindsDB, Adam Carrigan & Jorge Torres.

INSIGHTS GATHERED:

CURRENT CHALLENGES IN THE OPENSOURCE SPACE:

• Companies have an inability to manage the number of OS projects that they use. It is crucial to track and keep the components up to date and satisfy the requests of the community. Many companies are still finding “heartbleed” in over half of the scans — bad patching discipline!
• Transparency adds to security (presentation by the team that found heartbleed) and better process (e.g. code review)
• This is also present in closed source, but hidden, which means that open source companies take a direct hit reputation-wise
• Blackbox vulnerabilities exist across open and closed source
• There is a risk of pulling in more dependencies than necessary which adds more and more attached vectors (dependency management!) -> big enterprises are generally better at this
• It is oftentimes incredibly difficult to figure out what it means to be a true OS company. Being an AI OS company differs from a Crypto OS company. 90% of claims of being a true OS company are usually not accurate as there are many elements that need to be considered

THE ROLES OF BIG TECH COMPANIES FOR BECOMING THE DOMINANT POWERS IN THE OSS SPACE?

• Big corporates (esp. cloud vendors) “OSing” software to save on R&D
• OS companies are becoming cloud companies -> a very strong business model
• Commercial focus can be where companies can’t use the big cloud vendors due to their infrastructure
• Facebook is not going to become a Machine Learning company, but they did produce PyTorch!
• Google sees it (e.g. K8S) as a means to build bridges with other organizations and subsequently attract a vast amount of talent
• MongoDB was a service company but changed with Atlas (shifted to a cloud product)
• A big incentive for companies is to keep employees happy and maintain good relationships -> engineers may well leave otherwise

LONG-TERM FUTURE OF OPENSOURCE

• Developers are increasingly now advancing social connections via OS projects and the conversations around; becoming a social fabric of sorts
• Specialised platforms -> used to get all software from one company to keep support with a single vendor vs best of breed. Do we see a shift from this? An example is Reis for caching, there are NoSQL DBs -> can use a diversity of tools.
• A distributed workforce was already happening, but the trend has now been accelerated by Covid-19 (getting the right talent is crucial as well as enabling modern ways of working)
• European Governments are now adapting an OS first vendor strategy. For example, the European Commission, which is already using OS for many of its key ICT services and software solutions, will further increase the role internally. Governments need to be smart about the quality of the software they are implementing and strongly consider security issues!
• A large number of corporate OS releases are often Marketing and PR stunts. They can also OS their tools to damage competitors by drawing in developers to their platform (caution!)
• More interesting projects are coming from OS startups (small individual projects may not be in the game for profit)