Awakening of power: analyzing the development of open-source in 2015

Open source software is software that is available to everyone. This idea is not new. A guy named Richard Stallman (Richard Stallman) began to preach such software in the early 80s, calling it free software. Linus Torvalds began working on Linux in 1991 — an extremely successful open-source operating system that now runs our daily routine — literally. The Android operating system, which runs Google phones, is based on Linux. When you open a phone app like Twitter or Facebook, all the tweets and statuses hide huge data centers filled with hundreds of Linux machines. Linux is the foundation of the Internet.

If there is anything we learned in 2015, it’s something that you shouldn’t underestimate the power of open source.

2015 was the year when open source gained new significance, thanks to Apple, Google and Ilona Mask. Now more than ever, even the most powerful technology companies and entrepreneurs freely share the source code that underlies their latest technologies. They recognize that this will accelerate not only the progress of technology in general, but their own progress. This is altruism, which keeps pace with its own interests. And so now the world of technology functions.
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“This is not just a turning point, it’s a turning point in history,” said Brandon Keipers (Brandon Keepers), head of open source development at GitHub, an online service that is at the very heart of the open source software universe.

Apple opens source code

This year, Apple made the source code for the Swift programming language widely available, which was a serious departure from the company's previous course. "Apple Corporation" did not disclose the code of the previous Objective-C language, thereby ensuring that it will work only on Apple devices. By opening the Swift source code, Apple ensures that the language can be used on any device, including those running Linux, Android and Microsoft Windows.

Yes, Apple is not against the fact that the languages ​​developed in the company work on competitors' devices. But this is exactly what the company should do. Thanks to the proliferation of open source software, the modern world is now not the only platform, as it was in the 90s, during the development of Microsoft Windows. If Apple wants to keep up with modern trends in the IT world, then a company needs to make its code-making tools compatible with everything. This should be because software developers create software for all existing platforms that people around the world use. If Apple tools work only for the Apple platform, developers will be less willing to use them.

Unpersuasive? At the end of 2014, Microsoft came to the same conclusion when it opened the .NET source code. For years .NET software platform. used only to create software on Windows. Now, after its source code was opened, it became interesting to the wider community of developers who create software for Linux and Apple, using Microsoft tools.

Artificial Intelligence and Open Source

It was also the year when Google opened the source code for TensorFlow, the core of software that manages artificial intelligence services, including image and speech recognition, as well as translation tools for various languages. Over the past 15 years, Google has built a wide range of built-in technologies for data centers that helped it become the most powerful Internet company. These technologies allow all online services of the company to instantly process requests from billions of people all over the world, no matter where they are. As a rule, the “corporation of good” kept these technologies with itself, forcing others to create something in the image of already existing developments. With TensorFlow, Google decided to change its policy, revealing the world of technology that lies at the very heart of the Internet empire.

Why? Google understands how important AI is for the future, and the company knows that it can accelerate the development of AI if it shares its software. Google has a lot of experts who can be attributed to the brightest minds of the world. But not all. Those outside of Google can help the company improve TensorFlow - and you can use these improvements for your own good. Moreover, it helps to reveal new talents. Thus, the open source code TensorFlow helps the company train the most talented employees for a subsequent career at Google.

Of course, Google does not reveal all its secrets. The company does not open the entire source code TensorFlow and does not share the mountains of data that are so important for the training of AI services. Nevertheless, it does enough to make its steps important for both others and for Google.

Ilon for everyone

Elon Musk took it even further. In mid-December, he, along with Y Combinator President Sam Altman, presented OpenAI, a non-profit organization valued at $ 1 billion and dedicated to the same AI type that Google is developing. They even “lashed out” one of the leading researchers of Google, Ilya Sutskever (Ilya Sutskever). And they decided to make public all their developments. The idea is that by sharing with other latest AI technologies, they can ensure that no one becomes the sole leader in this field. This may seem illogical. And we will not see the results of such a policy soon. But if there is one thing that we realized in 2015, then this is the following: do not underestimate the power of open source.