Claude Brisson

Where’s My Open Source Dishwasher?

The first and main point about open source software is that it made the productivity of individual developers really explode. So economically speaking, it’s a great success. Add to this that using established open source software is a guaranty of code quality, security, customizability, reactivity, autonomy, community presence and low costs ; and you really wonder why some people still want to pay for less quality. Habits, maybe.

Now, when it comes to your code: should it be opened or not? Well, not necessarily. You do not want to expose your goose that lays golden eggs. Nor do you want to show everyone your quick and dirty code that fulfills your current needs. Note that going full open source is sometimes a viable path if it makes sense to be paid for services, exploitation rights or extra features, and you’ll cut many testing, debugging, commercial and marketing costs. More often, a good candidate to open sourcing will be a side module, not specific to your business, sufficiently complex and/or generic that there is more sense in letting a community maintain it than spending the resources yourself to keep it afloat.

And here, we are specifically talking about code. But there is more to it. Next to open source lies open data, open electronics, open governance... Today you can already find open source mobiles, open source cars, but not yet any open source dishwasher, alas.