Building an Open Source Developer Community
Announcing the Those That Inspire Developer Community
The world needs open source software, and the world needs more people that understand and contribute to open source software projects. I could not get my job done without open source, and actually you probably couldn’t either. Much of the software running the internet today is based on open source, and the open source community of developers is growing every day.
Companies such as GitLab even base their whole business around a core open source software product. You can download the full source code for Gitlab, you can modify it, you can run it on your own systems, and you can improve it.
The business model around Gitlab is then to build propriety products on top of this core platform that they can charge for. The core platform that continually improves over time from a worldwide developer community, then they charge for support and these proprietary products that run on the core platform.
Open source is a win-win situation
The core idea around open source is that the source code is available to anyone, but if you use it and improve it, those improvements are pushed into the mainline software for everyone to use. It is a total win-win situation, you get free, well designed source code, and the community improves the product over time.
Besides Gitlab, there are many examples of open source products that we use every single day. According to this wikipedia page, 54% of the devices shipped in 2015 ran Android, an open source operating system based on Linux, which is another open source operating system. Nginx is an example of a critical open source product that many of us use daily because it powers many of the web servers on the internet. The list goes on-and-on, but it’s clear that open source software is not going anywhere, it’s only accelerating!
Stop Reinventing the Software Wheel
One of the most important things open source software does for the world is that it allows developers and business to stop reinventing software each time they need to build a new product. Do you need to communicate with a GPS device? Do you need to run a web server? Do you need to build an app?
Well in each of those cases, there is most definitely an open source software package out there that can help you accomplish your goal so you don’t have to start from a single line of code. Some projects are more established than others, but each project gives you a baseline where you don’t have to start from square one and build the wheel, it’s already there.
You just have to know how to work with it and integrate it into your solution. Which is where I come in. I love the open source community, but I think there are many things that are lacking, including good documentation, training, and a worldwide community of people to go to when you need help tackling a problem.
I specifically also like to build software for offline systems; think WhatsApp or Facebook for a cruise ship. But many of the projects that are out there are targeted only for use on the open internet. So I’m announcing a project to build a developer community where we can all work together on open source projects that also work in offline networks.
Those That Inspire Developer Community
I’ve already started to build out the Those That Inspire community on Facebook as a platform for helping people accomplish their goals, so I’m putting together a community within Those That Inspire that allows us to build software to help ourselves, help others in the community, and help the world.
Right now we just have a small group in Gitlab with only one project there, but I hope to build this community out into a powerhouse for good and helping others. Comment below if you want to join the developer community and I will slowly start to put together a list of projects we can all work on together. You can find the Gitlab group here.
If you want to learn about more inspiring ideas and people, I welcome you to check out the Those That Inspire community. We are a like-minded community of doers that help each other succeed in business and in life; and we have a lot of fun at the same time. You can find out more about the group and our current 90 Day Content Challenge by clicking on the links.
