Open source drives innovation

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... there was a great battle for software. The empires of closed-source software were challenged by a loosely-connected alliance of open source rebels. Mighty and brave were the deeds of many in the alliance.

Open source has succeeded. It is no longer the rebel alliance. It won, in the sense that it is established and legitimate in the eyes of individuals, businesses, and governments. (It did not achieve world domination; if that was your goal then open source still has work to do. But that is another topic.)

If open source is not the rebel alliance, if it is not the subversive movement pushing for change, then what is it?

I believe it to be the research arm of the software industry. It is the laboratory in which new technologies are developed.

Consider these developments, all from open source and not from the "industry" as we know it:

Agile development: The polar opposite of the "big design up front" techniques used by traditional development shops. It was necessary for open source projects, since they lack the command-and-control structure necessary to implement BDUF.

NoSQL databases: Data stores for non-structured data. Big organizations have spent oodles of time trying to structure their data, just as they try to structure everything else. Open source has built memcached, CouchDB, and other approaches to data stores.

Scripting languages: Starting with the Unix shell scripts, through Perl, Python, and Ruby, open source has given us these languages. Closed source has given us Java, C#, and a new version of C++.

Distributed version control: Closed source was content with centralized version control. Only open source projects gave us Git and the idea of a distributed version control system.

Distributed projects: Open source runs on volunteers (usually) and it makes little sense to force contributors into a single location. Open source projects have contributors from around the world, virtual organizations that use the best available people.

Open source is still pushing change. Not merely pushing for change, but driving change. It is driving change at the technology level, which is why I consider it the research arm of the software industry.