The size of the open source division of Samsung has grown from 1 person to 40

Samsung enhances the free software world

Many companies start with the consumption of free software, but if they want to have some kind of voice in their development, they have to help such software. Gradually, the ideas of open source projects are spreading more and more in the company's culture.

About 2 years ago, Samsung’s open source team consisted of just one person: a Linux enthusiast and Ibrahim Haddad’s open source software. Today, he is the head of Samsung's research division in America .

Now a new Open Source Innovation Group consists of 40 people, of which 30 are developers. Most of their working day, these people devote to contributing to open source projects. Hiring is quite active. Plans are planned for the coming years to double the size of this group.

OSIG developers are working on projects that are very important for Samsung: Linux, Gstreamer (core of media players, video editors and streaming servers), FFmpeg (a set of libraries for converting audio and video recordings), Blink (web rendering engine of Chrome, Chromium and Opera) ), Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (set of graphic libraries) and Wayland (protocol for organizing Linux graphic server).
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According to Haddad, it is also planned to hire more junior-developers of open source projects. He also expressed confidence in the presence of a large number of opportunities for free code in the company.

Such a contribution is important for Samsung: almost any product (from phones and tablets to the not-so-smart home appliances) uses parts of free projects. But until some time the company did not participate in the development of open source programs.

The goal of the Open Source Innovation Group is to contribute to free software and gradually gain leadership in all open source projects that Samsung’s work relies on. Efforts are focused on improving technology, not products.

At least half of the working day for the open-source Samsung group is guaranteed to be spent on contributing to open-source projects, and in the remaining time, employees help Samsung's research teams. The latter includes the promotion of projects with free code for Samsung people outside the OSIG group.

In addition, several times a year, team members will participate in open source software conferences. The group is one of the few Samsung structures whose members can work remotely.

Compared to large similar teams at IBM and Intel, Samsung’s ambitious initiative is still in its embryonic state. There is still a lot of work to promote open source software within the company and create a positive image in the open source community.

This group is also very small, if you remember how huge the Korean giant is. Samsung employs more people than Google, Microsoft and Apple combined. Among more than 40 thousand software engineers will advance the idea of ​​open software.

A large part of the work on all open projects is performed by contributors who receive money for this. The face of open source is becoming more corporate.


Based on Linux.com .