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  Andrew ParkEditorial Lead
  Heavybit

Advantages of Open Source Software for Devs and Companies

Open-source software (OSS) advantages include lower starting costs, faster project starts, faster iteration, more-flexible software development processes, robust community-driven support, and easier license management, without being contractually locked into work with a single vendor...to name just a few.

What is open-source software? OSS is software publicly distributed with source code anyone can use or modify within the scope of its license.

Some of the most well-known organizations in developer circles are OSS companies or OSS-adjacent, including the Linux Foundation, MySQL, GNU, Apache, and the Open Source Initiative, among others. Many modern developer-first startups now offer hybrid open-source elements, such as Snyk, which offers open-source software composition analysis (SCA); and Sanity, which offers an open-source CMS studio.

There are quite a few important open-source advantages over proprietary “closed-source” software solutions, depending on who’s using (or working on) them. Individually, developers can start faster on projects with no initial cost outlay, while enterprise companies can take advantage of the speed and flexibility of OSS tools to execute large-scale projects such as digital transformation and data migrations.

Developers, companies considering OSS tools for their tech stack, and ambitious developers who might be considering launching an OSS project of their own can all make the most of the valuable benefits of open-source software we’ll cover in this article.

There are also potential advantages for using open-source software for building AI projects, such as large-language model (LLM) applications, which we’ll discuss below. Over the years, we’ve also seen several successful founders create vibrant open-source developer communities that helped turn ideas on paper into successful companies.

For direct insights on how to build open-source software projects, how to launch OSS startups, and how commercial OSS startups get funded, join the DevGuild: Open Source event. Or, read this guide on how to start an open-source project from first principles.

LOOKING FOR MORE RESOURCES ON OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE?

• Article: What Success Looks Like for Modern Open-Source Software Startups with Adam FitzGerald
• Article: How to Successfully Invest in Open-Source Startups with Cack Wilhelm
• On-Demand Video: See All Sessions on OSS Community, GTM, Licensing, and Investing at DevGuild: Open Source

Open-Source Software Benefits for Developers

While you can make the argument that OSS projects are less user-friendly than commercial experiences created by professional UX designers, there are many, many advantages for individual developers:

Speed and Visibility: Start Faster, Develop More Transparently

Pre-built infrastructure means you can build upon an existing framework instead of starting from scratch, without having to endure the lengthy sales cycle you would with a proprietary product. And the more mature an open-source project is, the more developed the foundation, documentation, and community will be.

In addition, a closed-source piece of software can often be a black box that neither developers nor business users (who aren’t programmers themselves) can’t meaningfully alter or enhance. As a result, when you experience challenges, you’ll need to partner with vendor support agents or just wait until the vendor builds a solution to your problem.

Open-source projects give you full visibility into the code base, which means you can frequently code your solutions and directly document your issues in community spaces. And you may receive a variety of responses that provide as much or more context as you’d receive from a professional support team, as fast or faster.

Collaboration and Scalability: Community Knowledge Share and Data Usage

OSS projects let you work with an entire community of other developers all using the same tools, who may have experienced similar issues and may already have solutions to share. And because different OSS projects offer different configurations for hosting and load balancing, they can offer more flexibility concerning your need to scale data usage up or down.

Security and Reliability: Yes, Really!

Open-source products often offer surprisingly robust security against conventional vulnerabilities as teams tend to test extensively before releasing new versions. Many successful open-source communities attract security experts who also make additions to the project.

That said, it may be worth mentioning that unless the community designates an ongoing security team, open-source projects may lack a dedicated resource to ensure ongoing protection against security vulnerabilities.

Also, in the case of mature and popular projects, in particular, open source can offer surprisingly high reliability as many community members may have detected, and already improved upon, reliability issues.

Cost-Effective Starts: Project Kickoff and Ongoing

And of course, unlike proprietary software solutions, most open-source projects are free of charge by default, though they may have specific licensing restrictions. A permissive open-source license, such as BSD, provides software as-is but lets developers do what they want with the code, so long as they acknowledge the creators.

Alternatively, a copyleft license, such as GPL, requires developers that distribute binaries also make source code available under the same terms, and forbids putting additional restrictions on any subsequent licensees.

Depending on the nature of the license, continuing to use an open-source product can mean lower or no ongoing maintenance fees. In contrast to OSS, any proprietary counterparts will not only require upfront costs but will also involve subscription fees and potential follow-on costs for additional service hours. However, there can be legal issues with open-source licensing.

Employment Opportunities: OSS Offers Valuable Work Experience

Some of the most widely used types of software and operating systems on the market today are open source: the Linux operating system, the Kubernetes container platform, the Django Python framework, and many others.

Looking at open source today, working on such projects can build actual developer credibility that strengthens your resume and GitHub Repo. Developers that are familiar with popular open-source tools and are passionate enough to contribute to them can find it easier to locate new job opportunities with employers that recognize such valuable skills.

Learn more:

• Podcast - How Microsoft Pivoted to Open Source via CodePlex on To Be Continuous
• Video - Building and Leveraging an Open Source Developer Community

What a lot of people want from open source is the ability to use it and the ability to produce things. Where we ended up with open source is, it is a community more than anything.

- Paul Biggar, Founder/CircleCI, Dark

Open-Source Software Benefits for Companies

Companies considering new tools can benefit from these advantages of open-source software:

Cost-Effective Benefits of Open-Source Software

Being free is an obvious point in favor of open source, especially for companies looking for cost-effective tools. Free software means a significantly cheaper project start and, depending on the license, potentially significant cost savings for ongoing maintenance.

Faster Launches

Rather than having to navigate a new vendor’s onboarding experience, which may or may not expediently cover everything your organization needs, open-source projects potentially help you get up and running faster.

Instead of having to navigate higher pricing tiers or wait on professional support teams to respond, your company can potentially access everything an open-source project has to offer instantly, and for mature projects, your company can also potentially access a wealth of documentation from many users who have come before you.

No Contract Lock-In

In addition to not being tied to a pricing tier, open-source products don’t require companies to commit to a specific vendor over the life of a contract. Your company can pivot more quickly to other tools if needed.

Extensibility

Proprietary products can be black boxes that don’t give your team visibility into functionality or the ability to make meaningful adjustments. For open-source products, a company’s developers can peek under the hood at the underlying open-source code and often make direct changes and updates as needed. Deeper visibility into the guts of an open-source framework means you may be able to iterate and launch new features faster.

Community-Based Intel

The ideal open-source products have vibrant, active communities with whom teams can actively collaborate and get fast answers to their questions.

Improved Hiring

While hiring developers remains as competitive as ever, companies that use open-source tools can find common ground with candidates who are passionate about contributing to open-source projects. They can also ensure their next hires are familiar with open-source tools already in use, and significantly decrease employee onboarding time.

Learn more:

• Podcast - Open Source for Enterprise on To Be Continuous
• Podcast - Datadog Discusses How Companies Accomplish Objectives on Open Source on Don’t Make Me Code

You have to be extensible, otherwise, folks won’t have an opportunity to contribute anything...These days, it's very rare...to run into libraries or SDKs that aren't in some way liberally licensed...whether it be open source or something close to an open-source license.

-Ilan Rabinovitch, SVP Product/Datadog

Open-Source Software Benefits for Technical Founders

For those who have created open-source projects, or are considering founding a new OSS startup, open source has become a popular business model. Of course, proprietary software frequently goes to market as software-as-a-service (SaaS), a paid product that requires an initial investment with ongoing subscription fees.

From a business standpoint, one of the most obvious disadvantages of open-source software is that such projects typically launch as a free offering. But while OSS startups may not immediately take in revenue as soon as they acquire new users, founders can still utilize some unique and powerful benefits of open-source software:

Faster, Community-Driven Development

Many successful closed-source software projects rely on their in-house software development team, which usually consists of a talented but finite group. An open-source project can, in some cases, rapidly evolve as vibrant communities take your codebase and run with it.

Potentially Lower Development Costs

And, of course, open-source development doesn’t just come down to what a company’s internal team of devs can accomplish within a standard work week. Open-source development can mitigate longer-term costs as developer communities grow and evolve the project alongside in-house owners.

Community Goodwill

While not taking in revenue up-front may seem like a limiting factor for the growth of an open-source startup, it can also generate a great deal of goodwill among the community.

Your Own Ecosystem

By going open source, you can create your own user ecosystem around the open-source components you’ve created. Having a thriving community that understands your product and actively engages with it as both end-users and builders opens up new opportunities for your business.

Potential Hiring Pool

When it’s time to grow your open-source business, what better place to look than the community that has already been building on your software? Having a vibrant open-source user base can make it much easier to find highly qualified and enthusiastic talent.

Alternatives to Traditional Business Models

Building an ecosystem gives you the ability to create demand for your product and assess it much more directly. Open source sets the stage for the popular bottom-up business model, in which companies look to generate revenue via self-service, rather than building out a full sales team as part of a more-traditional top-down business model.

There are also successful companies that use an open-core or commercial open-source software (COSS) model that monetizes certain features beyond core functionality but maintains an open-source license structure.

Overall, founders may find that open source licensing offers more flexibility than proprietary projects, though there are potential drawbacks to consider that we’ll mention shortly. There are also successful projects that use other alternative business models we’ll discuss below.

Alternatives to Traditional Customer Support

While it’s important to provide robust support and clear documentation for any software product, with OSS, your developer community may be able to self-service and create their own open-source solutions to share with other members.

Learn more:

• Podcast - How Open Source Lets Founders Create Categories on To Be Continuous
• Podcast - The Rise of Open Source with Tim O’Reilly on Developer Love

In releasing open-source projects, you're getting people to use it, you're going to standards bodies, you're going to conferences...The first thing that you've got to do as an entrepreneur...if you're doing category creation...you've got to get them to think about your thing. Then the second thing that you have to do, which is just as much work, is...attach a value to that thing.

-Martin Casado, Partner/Andreesen-Horowitz

Advantages of Open Source for AI Development

With the rise of AI and LLMs come new opportunities to take advantage of the benefits of open source to create new types of applications faster. LLMs are perhaps best known for their abilities to generate large amounts of text quickly in response to being prompted.

However, there are emerging use cases for applications built on top of language models, including coding assistants like GitHub Copilot and Continue; documentation generators like Scribe and Mintlify; and code review tools like CodeRabbit and WhatTheDiff.

And as of the time of this writing, there’s an enormous and vibrant community of open-source models available to use for a variety of development use cases, including the Llama family of models from Meta, the Gemma family of models from Google, the Granite family of models from IBM, Mistral’s family of models, to name just a few–and organizations like HuggingFace offer full lists of open models that are ready to use.

Those looking to build applications using AI will find many advantage to using open-source models, including:

Start Faster (Without Building Your Own)

No PhD in machine learning? No problem. While the barrier to entry for building your own language model is rapidly decreasing, it’s quite possible you don’t need to build your own LLM at all. As of this writing, there are thousands of open-source models, already built (and in some cases, fine-tuned for higher performance, even for specialized use cases in healthcare, finance, and education) by researchers and enthusiasts for both general and highly specific purposes.

No Starting Costs

There’s a treasure trove of open-source models with absolutely no starting cost just a click away. Many have fairly permissive licenses, though there are emerging conversations about increasingly restrictive licenses for open models in terms of commercial usage.

No Vendor Lock-In

There are quite a few high-quality proprietary models from well-known third-party API vendors like OpenAI and Anthropic, and such organizations generally offer strong performance but require customers to sign a binding contract for a set period. Open-source models are available on demand, and should you need to switch models, you can do so at will.

Vibrant Community Support (for Popular Models)

The most popular open-source models have lively communities of users that contain enthusiasts, academic researchers, and developers actively working on projects of their own. Sticking to the most popular models is generally a guarantee you’ll be able to find other people with whom you can discuss your projects (and to whom you can ask questions).

Potential Challenges in Open Source for AI Development

Developing products with open-source AI models isn’t without its challenges. Here are some potential issues to consider:

Subject Matter Expertise for Advanced Issues

Each day there seems to be new tutorials, courses, and tooling to help ML beginners scramble up the learning curve, but it’s possible that extremely advanced nuances of language models such as model compatibility and data management may require the expertise of those who studied them as an academic focus.

Lack of Support for Esoteric Models

Be advised that there are more-esoteric open-source models with fewer users and smaller communities, which may make it harder to get feedback. Some models were built by extremely well-funded teams and have plentiful documentation and many active users answering questions on community forums. Others were built by PhD students for their thesis project, then left on the shelf without much in the way of documentation or production-ready tooling.

Growing Questions about “Free Use” Licenses

As mentioned above, Meta’s Llama model arguably isn’t full-fledged open source due to its licensing restrictions. In the wake of changes in licensing terms from established projects like HashiCorp, Elastic, and MongoDB, it’s perhaps not surprising to see open-source projects switch to more business-focused licenses for the sake of defensibility, but there may be other open-source models that make comparable changes in the future.

“In the future, our entire information diet is going to be mediated by [AI] systems. They will constitute basically the repository of all human knowledge. And you cannot have this kind of dependency on a proprietary, closed system.” -Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist/Meta

Deciding Between Open-Source and Proprietary Software

If you’re a founder (or would-be founder), choosing open source vs. proprietary won’t necessarily limit the growth of your project: The mobile operating system known as Android began its life as an open-source project that now lives on more than 3 billion devices; whereas iOS from Apple has largely always been commercial software–and lives on more than 2.2 billion devices.

Ultimately, your decision to choose open-source tooling against proprietary options for your next project will likely come down to your specific needs with respect to such factors as:

• Goals: First and foremost, is your goal to ship a proprietary product or an OSS project?
• Budget: Can you afford bespoke proprietary tools, or do free OSS tools make sense?
• Development: Is this an effort for a small team, or are you open to cultivating a community of developers?
• Timing: Do you have a tight timeline or are you open to cultivating a long-term community?
• Maintenance and Support: Do you plan to maintain the project yourself, or will you leave it to an OSS community?
• Licensing Fees & Flexibility: How permissive do you plan to be? Will you allow others to inspect and modify your code?

You may also need to consider other factors like your need (and ability/budget) to hire additional team members to support your project, as well as the need to find early design partners to provide crucial feedback to find product-market fit.

If your goal is to create an open-source project that eventually goals commercial, you’ll need to consider revenue models, creating a software bill of materials (SBOM) to help understand your dependencies, and look into trademark protections. Learn more about the trade-offs between open-source software vs. proprietary in this full article.

Additional Resources

• Heavybit: Open-Source Commercial Business Practices Roundup
• Heavybit: Best Practices - Open-Source Project Management
• Opensource.com: About Licenses and Standards
• Wikipedia: Free and Open-Source Software
• Wikipedia: Proprietary Software
• Linux Foundation: Guide to Starting an Open-Source Project
• HackerNoon: What is COSS?