Software is Eating the World, And Open Source Eating Software, So Is Open Source Eating the world!?
Amit Godbole
Working for Customer Success @ Marvell | AI Infrastructure Enthusiast | Network Switching Systems Solutions
"Software is Eating the World" is a well-known article by Marc Andreessen, a VC and founder of Netscope. Marc predicted that software would disrupt and drive innovation in nearly all industries within the next decade. We have already witnessed this phenomenon in sectors such as networking, automotive and aviations.
Software is everywhere. The number of lines of code (LOCs) in products is on the rise. "Line of Code" is a metric used to estimate software size by counting the source code lines in an application or product. It is always intriguing to know the number of lines of code in an application. Previously, companies kept this information confidential until open-source platforms emerged. Nowadays, many companies publicly disclose their product sizes in terms of lines of code.
Open-source is eating the software.
Open source software refers to the practice of freely sharing the source code, allowing developers to contribute and collaborate in a community-driven development process. This approach offers several key benefits, including transparency and the ability to quickly resolve issues. Open source foundations actively support this collaborative and innovative environment.
In contrast, closed source or proprietary software involves keeping the source code confidential. In this model, a company leads the development process and maintains control over the codebase and distribution. This provides the company with control and protection of their intellectual property.
GitHub is a popular platform for hosting code, providing features like version control and collaboration tools. With over 100 million developers, GitHub is shaping the future of software by facilitating collaboration and innovation.
Open source options are available for various software-defined systems, including Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and Software-Defined Storage (SDS) and more. This allows developers to customize and adapt these systems to meet their specific needs.
领英推荐
Open Source Is Eating The World: Open source has become mainstream, as evidenced by billion-dollar mergers and acquisitions.
Kubernetes, the top containers orchestration platform, started as a project that Google open sourced to the Linux Foundation. Now, even Google's competitors collaborated on this platform. The Telecommunications industry also embraced open source and involved many open source projects under the Linux Foundation alone. One example was the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP). The Open Compute Project (OCP), supported by Facebook, Google, and others, had been active for several years. Leading vendors, enterprises, governments, cloud providers, system integrators, and communities all embraced open source for innovation. It was widely used and accepted.
Conclusion: Open source reshaping the product development as it gains more acceptance. Collaboration prioritized over competition, fostering shared innovation. Cutting-edge technology becomes accessible to smaller organizations and individual developers, democratizing innovation and enabling them to compete with industry giants. Open source projects follow open standards for compatibility. Users can easily switch between platforms and tools. Sharing source code fosters transparency and trust, as users can verify software behavior, privacy, and security.
References: 1. Software ate the world and Open Source is eating software @ NFDI4DataScience Lecture Series, 2. Why Software Is Eating the World by Marc Andreessen