5 Reasons to Participate in Open Source

Most of the audience here must be familiar or at least heard of the term "Open Source Software", or alternatively "Free and Open Source Software".

Open Source software by it's name means that the Source Codes are made available along with the software instead of just distributing the binary. But the term has more bigger implication than that.

First and foremost, it believes deeply in the philosophy that the technology of computation is not own by a person, a country or an organization, instead it is build upon the community of tech-lovers and consumers.

By creating a sense of community, it reaches to everyone and every needs. Saying that, there exist almost nothing that cannot be used for anything or can not be developed a step further. This culture prevents re-inventing the wheel.

These implications not only produced world's most powerful and most used Operating System Linux, but also produced largest open source ecosystem NPM, revolutionized Mobile Industry by Android and other tools and also made drastic change in Web Industry as we know it by thousands of Frameworks and Tools at our disposal.

Coming to the point of argument that everyone should, at least once in their life, contribute and consume Open Source. Here is, according to my point of view, 5 key reasons to do so!

1. It's Free: No doubt about it. No matter how much we are to viewing everything economically, we can't keep our eyes from free stuff. And Open Source community consists of thousands and millions Free user product, developer tools and other kind of stuffs.
2. You Already Know What It Is: Another important point to consider is it's 'Openness'! Since the source code is distributed along with the package, you can figure out the architecture, flow of development and even potential security flaws which makes the software have honest relationship with it's user. Apart from that, user can Modify (according to it's LICENSE permission) and rebuilt and even redistribute it for other purpose as well.
3. Learning to Built: The biggest impact of this Open Source culture is not on the Tech Industry, but the very people who makes entry to the Industry every single day, the freshers. Haven't Open Source been there, it would take a average person lots and lots of potential time to acquire new technologies, team bonding and figuring out the development procedures. But Open Source culture makes it so easy, that one almost get used to a regular development mindset.
4. To Dream Big: One thing that Open Source community always assure is. no matter what you do, your toil won't get wasted. And they prove it right every time. Whether it is a journey of a hobby project on 8086 CPU to create a monolithic kernel to what Linux is today, or be it anything. This attitude let even a newbie to dream big with large impact in our society because nobody fails in Open Source.
5. Meet the Great: By introducing yourself to a larger community in the world, not based upon race, not based upon color, not based upon ethnicity, but based upon common interest and intellectual thoughts; you already made a contribution to a better world. This familiarization creates an opportunity not to just meet with some greatest mind of the century but also to enjoy working with them.

Thank you for reading this! I hope you have a good day. If you like this article please share with your friends, collegues or classmates.