The interconnected world is an inescapable reality that we experience every day. From the smartphone to the car or the watch, it opens up a universe of information, support and possibilities. Among the achievements of technological development we find a phenomenon that marks part of its history: free software and collaboration between developers.
Human beings are social beings, according to Aristotle’s definition more than two thousand years ago. Collaboration has been essential to progress, and in technology open source, in some ways, represents how collaboration cuts across the most striking advances. In software, collaboration is one of the driving forces behind innovation.
In this sense, open source software has not only democratised access to technology, but also fosters a culture of participation and contribution, where every individual has the opportunity to contribute and benefit from collective knowledge.
Inclusive transparency
As physical distances are blurred and language barriers are overcome, FOSS becomes a bridge that unites people from different cultures, countries and histories, so that inclusion and diversity in the process of technological creation are consolidated in a very complex context.
Free software represents a philosophy that advocates freedom of use, study, modification and distribution of software for all. It has revolutionised the technology industry and transformed the way we interact with software. In fact, the web world is experiencing a wave of openness.
Free software refers to computer programs whose source code is available for anyone to study, modify and distribute freely. Unlike proprietary software, which restricts these features, free software promotes transparency, collaboration and equal access to technology.
You may not know that applications you may use every day are open source. The Linux operating system, the Mozilla Firefox web browser and the LibreOffice suite. Many developers use the Linux operating system to gain experience and test a style of collaboration that has been around for more than 20 years.
How do we use it?
FOSS applications cover a range of fields, from operating systems to productivity tools and mobile applications. Their flexible and customisable nature makes them optimal for adapting to the specific needs of users and organisations.
In addition, open source software fosters innovation by allowing a global community of developers to contribute and continuously improve the code.
Among the advantages of FOSS are improved security, cheaper prices for applications using it, vendor independence and a greater degree of customisation.
Collective knowledge
By using open source software, companies, organisations or institutions can avoid licensing restrictions and associated costs, while maintaining full control over their IT systems. As a result, many technology companies have created foundations or communities to share their knowledge.
With the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence, the demand for open and collaborative software looks set to continue to grow. It is not unreasonable to think, therefore, that they will generate significant advances in a variety of fields, ranging from education, design, content creation or health.
Collaboration in software development, such as open source, has proven to be a catalyst for technological progress. As the world becomes increasingly complex, collaborative efforts between developers, universities and organisations are playing an essential role in creating effective solutions.
The age of collaboration
Although they are two complementary terms, open source and developer collaboration are not the same. Open source often implies collaboration between developers, while not all collaborative software is necessarily open source.
For example, there are software projects where different teams collaborate on their development, but the source code may be closed and not publicly available. Logically, open source software is, by definition, collaborative, as it depends on the contribution of a community of developers for its growth.
Collaboration in software development has become the norm rather than the exception. The proliferation of open source platforms, forums and developer communities has facilitated cooperation on a global scale. This mentality has produced high quality software projects, blending ideas from experts everywhere.
The most striking success stories
A prime example of the benefits of collaboration in software development is OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research organisation dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence. Its name is probably familiar to you, as its text generation model has marked a before and after in the history of the technology.
Founded in 2015, OpenAI has brought together some of the leading specialists in artificial intelligence and has managed to get both multinationals and individuals to use it for their work, for research or to transform natural language into code.
Other successful projects
One of OpenAI’s most notable achievements is the well-known Chat GPT, a text generation language model that has revolutionised the way we interact with technology. TensorFlow, developed by Google, is an open source machine learning library that is also changing the AI industry.
WordPress is another example of how open source is driving innovation in the web development industry. This well-known content management system is based on open source, which means that its source code is available for the developer community to contribute to its expansion.
