Five years ago, open source was predicted to have a murky future. Fortunately, none of these prophecies came true: open source is not only thriving, it’s also commercially successful. The community is becoming ever more global, and projects are becoming more complex and interesting. That is why GitNation organizes an awards ceremony for the whole OSS scene – Open Source Awards.
We’ve talked to Stefan Feješ, a software engineer who created the 6th fastest growing open source project of 2018. Stefan was featured as a speaker at some of the most prominent conferences around the world, and he has also organized and hosted multiple editions of Open Source Awards.
Stefan, 5-7 years ago it was popular to predict the end of open source. There was an endless number of headlines like "Why open source is going to die" or "Why open source will never beat paid software".
Today we see the total opposite, with open source evolving and being in demand more than ever. What are the trends driving the development of modern open source today?
— I got into open source about five years ago when the whole "open source is going to die" era was over. The most significant buzz around open source back then was about creators not being able to do it for a living due to the nature of open source software (hint: it's free).
I think few factors contributed to the much healthier open source environment that we have today.
The dev community got larger; companies started supporting open source by involving their talent in open source projects (think about React.js) and investing financial resources to make it sustainable. We also saw hundreds of conferences that celebrated open source success and connected communities worldwide.
How can companies and customers benefit from open source?
— I think companies benefit quite a lot from open source. When we talk about big companies with their projects, such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others, the benefits are obvious. They can run massive projects with the help of others, build a community around their product (think about VSCode), or easily attract talent passionate about working with them.
Smaller companies with limited resources also rely on open source to get their project to market much faster. Shipping MVPs with all open source frameworks and libraries got much faster and easier than running a company in the old days.
On the other hand, the end customer doesn't care about the tech stack behind the software they are using - all they care is about “jobs to be done”. Still, open source pushes the boundaries of available technologies, which helps with overall speed, user experience, and user satisfaction. So I'd say that everyone in the ecosystem benefits from open source quite a lot.
Is it true that open source applications are less prone to bugs and other issues?
— I think it depends from project to project. Larger projects with the bigger community around them tend to be used by many companies out there, so naturally, since more eyes are looking for bugs, there are fewer bugs in such projects. In small projects built by a single maintainer, it's expected to see more bugs, but the beauty of open source is that you can quickly fix them yourself, help the maintainer, and not rely on a 3rd party to do it for you.
To not make the picture one-sided, let's talk about the disadvantages of open source.
The community benefits quite a lot from open source, but a specific group of people expects everything to be served to them for free without investing any effort. In case of a bug, missing documentation, or required feature, you'll sometimes see lots of toxicity among certain members - they want a solution to their problem and treat open source like the product they bought - not something that community made for everyone. This toxicity puts a lot of pressure on project creators who want to make sure everyone has a great experience with the software they created.
Luckily those are just minority and with an overall fantastic community the general situation is much brighter.
Open-source was once thought to be less secure than proprietary products. However, numerous independent studies have shown that it’s now, on average, safer than its proprietary counterpart. What do you think about that?
— Again it's hard to come up with a general comparison, but one clear benefit of open source software is that code is available to everyone. More eyes will look for security flaws in projects with many users, and more developers would fix such issues.
If you start working on an open source project, you immediately make friends with the people involved in it. You can learn from them and exchange ideas.
Do you consider the Open Source Awards a good way to show appreciation for the community?
— Since I got involved with open source, I met many amazing people from around the world working on the same projects. At one point, I even flew to few countries to speak at their conferences, attend meetups and get to know them better.
You'll rarely find somebody with the same interests who lives across the street, but there's a high chance that somebody out there is super passionate about the same tech stack, open source project, and technology behind it - and you're just a few clicks away from collaborating with them on such ideas! I think that's one huge advantage of the internet and open source software in general.
Can you tell us a bit more about why you think open source workers need their own awards?
— There has never been a dedicated place in the community to see top-growing projects with strong future potential. We have GitHub's trending page, but it does not receive much love, so we thought there is enough space to create something new to celebrate open source success and the community behind it. We want to make contributors feel appreciated for their work and kindly thank them for all the hours they put in to make open source an awesome opportunity to learn and grow!
What would you recommend the JavaScript developers attending the JSNation Live Conference 2021? What should they pay attention to?
I would say to all participants to have a great time, connect with new people, make new friends, discover some fantastic new open source projects, or get inspired to create new ones themselves.
There isn't anything specific about making a project more successful at Open Source Awards. There is a very diverse set of projects, each with a unique approach that was nominated by the community in the months before the event. Considering the number of nominations we have each year, it's safe to say that everyone who made it to the finals is a winner!
About GitNation
GitNation is a foundation contributing to the development of the technological landscape by organizing events which focus on the open source software. We organize meaningful and entertaining JavaScript conferences and meetups, connecting talented engineers, researchers, and core teams of important libraries and technologies.
Besides offering single conference tickets, the organization also sells a GitNation Multipass providing discounted access to multiple remote JavaScript conferences and workshops.
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