Why open source is critical for the continued advancement of new tech

How open source shapes our tech stack and drives what’s next in cloud computing, AI, and infrastructure.

The open source movement has played a significant role throughout my 31 years in the IT industry. During my tenure as Atlantic.Net CEO, I have witnessed numerous significant technology breakthroughs. As a business, we have had to drive open source initiatives to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive.

The early 2000s were the time of virtualization and the birth of cloud computing, followed quickly by the shift to smartphones and cellular communications. Now is the time of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The most critical and consistent force driving this progress has been open source software: The very foundation on which many of these technologies are built.

The popularity of open source

Today, we take open source technology for granted. It’s important to remember open source foundations are rooted in the very beginnings of the Internet. Even today, Linux servers power the majority of the world’s websites, Apache and Nginx are the most popular web servers, and in fact, open source dominates the web with well over a 75% share in the market.

Collaboration is key; software is built and maintained not by one company, but by a community of developers working together in a public forum. A collaborative approach helps to produce software that is far more stable and secure than many of its closed source counterparts.

There has been a similar pattern in the mobile industry. The smartphone operating system Android is installed on billions of smartphones, and it has its roots in the open source Linux kernel. Keeping Android open source has allowed hardware makers and app developers to build a wide range of mobile apps that work with several different types of phones.

Artificial Intelligence has gained lots of traction thanks in part to open source frameworks like TensorFlow and PyTorch; it’s a similar story with ML workloads. This is more evidence that when the source code is open, anyone can learn from it, modify it, and build upon it. Progress happens faster when we are all trying to solve the same problem collaboratively.

Read more: Using metrics to improve open source communities

The key benefits of open source

The practical benefits of open source are clear. Everyone wins when it comes to open source software. Our customers benefit from an affordable cloud platform that isn’t bottlenecked by additional licensing fees, Atlantic.Net benefits from lower costs, and a highly robust platform that we can explicitly customize to our exact needs.

Who else wins?

• Our developers: Our devs win because we use open source development tools, giving them access to a global community for support and advice.
  
• Our customers: Our fantastic customers benefit from better, safer, and more affordable technology. The competition and creativity introduced by open source have led to new and exciting products and services.
  
• Our organization: The Atlantic.Net cloud platform is built using open source technologies like KVM and Ubuntu. We offer our clients pre-configured open source 1-click applications like  LAMP, WordPress, Docker, and NodeJS.

What open source tech powers Atlantic.Net?

Let’s take a deeper look at how Atlantic.Net uses open source technology to open some of our core cloud services.

• Linux: The base operating system for our server fleet, providing a stable operating environment.
• KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine): We use KVM, which is part of the Linux kernel, to create and manage your virtual machines.
• Native database replication: Our PostgreSQL and MySQL managed database services use the software’s built-in replication for read replicas and failover.
• Distributed replicated block device (DRBD): We support DRBD for block-level replication. It creates network-mirrored storage, writing data to more than one place at a time.
• Ceph: This is a main component of our distributed storage system. Ceph provides our block, object, and file storage and includes data replication to protect against hardware failure.
• Ansible, Puppet, & Chef: Our platform supports these configuration management tools. You can use your existing files to automate software installation using our API.

Read more: Measuring open source community health with Savannah

How to contribute to open source

The open source community depends on the active participation of a global community. Having built a business on open source foundations for over 31 years, I believe support comes down to four key areas: Time, talent, resources, and information.

• Give your time. It may sound obvious, but one of the most constructive ways to contribute is by dedicating your time to an open source project. This doesn’t just mean writing code; other areas in demand are submitting clear bug reports, improving documentation, and answering questions in forums. If a project’s documentation was confusing to you, it will no doubt confuse someone else, so fixing it helps everyone who reads it after you.
  
• Share your talent. If you have a specific skill, offer it to a project you use. It’s easy to contribute code to GitHub. Good writers can improve documentation, and experienced system administrators can help with daily operational tasks. Mentoring new contributors is another great way to share skills and strengthen the community. I remember in the early days of the Internet in the early 90s, we sent speakers to various user groups to help educate people about the Internet and email, when it was in its early stages, and most people did not know anything about the technologies.
  
• Provide resources. Open source projects require infrastructure and can sometimes require direct financial support. I feel strongly that this is where businesses have a duty to step up. At Atlantic.Net, we have sponsored numerous open source initiatives, notably the Open Source Initiative (OSI). We have supported grassroots initiatives like Bar Camp, Code Camps, WordCamps, and more. We sponsored some events, made in-kind donations, and also provided free services to many projects.   
  
• Spread information. Be an advocate for the tools you use, write about your experiences, speak at local events, and encourage your employer to use and contribute to open source software. A well-informed community makes better decisions and helps these projects grow. We have spent years writing tutorials and blogs on our website to share the information. We have also contributed to Open source publications like ISACA, and may more over the years.

One important thing that I have learned is that life is not a destination, but rather a journey, and we ought to share goodness along the way, and we have done exactly the same by supporting our community. Open source is not an ideology; it’s a practical and proven method for building better software. It enables the sharing of ideas and allows for the rapid testing of new concepts. By supporting this work with our time, talent, resources, and information, we are all investing in a more open and capable technological future.

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