| Lightbot 2017 is here, and open source software is more popular than ever in the new year. It cannot be denied that open source has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. In January 2007, only a handful of large companies were investing heavily in open source, and closed-source software vendors like Microsoft and VMware dominated the enterprise computing market. |
After a decade, open source software is ubiquitous, with more than two-thirds of companies contributing open source. Open source technologies like OpenStack, docker and KVM are used to build the next generation of infrastructure. But the open source community also faces a new set of challenges. What open source programmers and companies need to do is to think about how to stand out in 2017.
Open Source's Biggest Challenge
cloud computing
Enterprises are now advocating migrating to the cloud. According to sources, it is expected that cloud computing will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.4% in the future. That's great news for open source technology. But, for those who believe that the main purpose of open source (or free software) should be free users, this is bad news. Even the cloud is powered by open source code.
internet of things
The challenges presented by IoT are similar to open source for cloud computing. Many IoT devices, such as smart thermostats, are powered in part by open source technology. But for the user, this doesn't mean much, because users usually don't have the ability to modify the code running on the device, and these files are often undocumented because they lack interfaces for easy modification and rely on proprietary components.
apple
The open source community has won the long war against Microsoft. However, Apple still doesn't really like open source (ironically, given that MacOS is partially built on open source code from BSD). Of course, Apple has also released some open source code. But most of Apple's products and platforms are super proprietary and closed. Mac as a very successful closed source software company, open source will face fierce competition in the consumer market.
corporate control
In the past, most open source code was written by volunteers. Today, the vast majority of code contributions to projects like Linux and OpenStack come from programmers like Red Hat and Intel. In fact, it's a good thing that companies are spending so much money on open source development... But the change does reflect a much greater degree of corporate control over open source code. This leads to tensions that the open source community must learn to deal with.
There is no doubt that open source software will continue to thrive in this new year. But the open source landscape is changing as open source enters new territories, and the open source community must adapt.
Address of this article: https://www.linuxprobe.com/oss-challenge.html Editor: Ren Weiguo, Auditor: Pang Zengbao