Week 12
if(only_open_source) {...}
Would I want to work at a company that only produced open source software? Honestly, it’s hard to say right now. As I become more familiar with Open Source communities I want to tread lightly. I’ve grown quite fond of open source concepts and partaking in bright and colorful communities, however I would still like to branch out and explore other faucets of the tech industry. Perhaps in a few years from now with more experience and appreciation and understanding of life and my values, I would be better equipped to answer this. I would want to respectfully, diversify my exposure to different experiences before deciding if this is the space I want to thrive in as a budding Computer Scientist and Software developer. That being said, I’ve looked into Red Hat multiple times before taking this class or even realizing that it was one of the most financially successful Open Source companies in the world. So maybe I already do have some sort of predisposition to Open Source companies or concepts by default…
$ cd Next.js
$ git log --reverse
commit message Tuesday April 26 
:
Today team TON and I discussed project updates, shared a few roadblocks that we ran into with our sprint tasks, and assigned more tasks for the coming week. Michelle and I decided that we would divide up the tasks involved with rendering our team example. This is one of the final section of tasks that we need to complete before we can deploy our example app to ZEIT and submit a PR to Next.js. 
commit message Wednesday April 27 
:
Today, Michelle and I had a Zoom meeting to discuss the specifics about rendering our example and to break down all of the complexities associated with it. Once we defined a set of mini-tasks that needed to be completed, we divided up the work between the two of us based on interests and skills. I look forward to collaborating with Michelle on this more closely over the next week.
Musings on business models for open source software
While it should be noted that Tom Callaway’s perspective on Open Source business models is biased towards Red Hat’s, it’s interesting to hear his reasoning behind the company’s financial success sans an open core concept. I learned a few things by reading his musings on open source business models 
:
-
How other companies with “open source” sections make money
. Out of all the models that Callaway introduces, I found the FUD model to be the most amusing because it relies on a client’s “fear, uncertainty, and doubt” 
in the company’s open source code to profit from “commercial” licenses. While it does make sense from a proprietary standpoint, a company that practices FUD sends an overall message that almost feels anti-open source. At least that’s how Callaway is selling it to us 
. I was also surprised to find out that this was the business model for MongoDB, but it ultimately explained the proprietary vibes I got from using the program. -
Not everything that sounds too good to be true is.
Callaway touts this idyllic scenario where not only can anyone look at and contribute to Red Hat’s codebase, but Red Hat itself can profit from it. It’s a bright and vibrant idea that seems impossible to sustain, but somehow RedHat does it. This profit comes from what Callaway describes as the unmatched value that Red Hat provides its customers with because of the expansive development pool that it has access to by design. In Red Hat’s case, that’s a win-win. Unlimited free collaborators and a sizeable profit margin.
Election fraud: Is there an open source solution? 
At first glance, I would’ve said that an Open Source solution to election fraud was impossible. My reasoning would’ve been based around what I think I know about federal government protocols and code security (which is not a lot 
). After reading this article though, I’m starting to think it’s possible. The Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Institute, whose founding story is interesting in itself, is championing the idea of technology that is made to keep our elections honest and free from interference. The global scope of the project is impressive, although there does seem to be some kind of “legitimizing” process for potential contributors to the code. I wonder to what capacity (if any) that these approvals of contributors hurts OSET’s ability to form completely open and diverse communities. On a different note, since the company plans on releasing their tech in the public domain, I’m interested to know how they plan on handling liability concerns over the tech. Overall it seems like a super interesting project and completely relevant to the times.
Contributions Made This Week 
I have been feeling a bit under the weather this week, so in the interest of rest and rejuventaion, I have decided to take a temporary break from contributions.
I did look into the 2019 Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE project a little more though. I used the filter tool on the project to better understand the kinds of PRs that were approved in the project and gain a better insight on the kind of help that JHU was looking for in maintaining the repo.
I noticed that only 13 PR’s were merged into the project since it was created. This is out of the 179 PR’s that are closed for the project. I suspect that this project isn’t necessarily looking for contributions from the community at this time that are related to data fixes, but is perhaps more focused with aggregating data from their sources and getting it out there for people to use. Most responses on existing PRs and issues seem to be community-related and helpful for alerting others about data discrepancies.
Some updates on last week’s PR:
I’m the #39 Contributor on Cloudflare’s Worker’s Docs!! There were only 52 contributors in the project to begin with, but who’s counting?
