Will GitHub's App be open source?

As early as the GitHub Universe conference in 2019, GitHub officially announced that they would soon launch a mobile app. Recently, the GitHub APP finally came out.

As the world's most popular gay dating site, there was naturally a lot of excitement after its release. However, many developers also pointed out that its functions were not comprehensive enough and hoped that other functions such as code editing could be added.

In response to this, an enthusiastic developer left a message suggesting that GitHub's mobile application be open sourced so that everyone can work together to optimize it.

The director of GitHub responded to this matter.

Will GitHub's mobile app be open source?

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In response to this question, Ryan Nystrom, engineering director at GitHub, gave two responses:

"It's not right now."

"Maybe."

Open source is a major trend nowadays. Although there are many softwares that do not need to be open source, as the world's largest open source software platform, shouldn't its own products be open source?

Many open source projects today are developed on or through GitHub. For this tool that developers use to make a living, improving the user experience of GitHub App can effectively improve the efficiency and work methods of developers, so if the project is really open source, it will definitely attract many developers to participate.

But the reason why Ryan Nystrom is not in a hurry to open source or does not "look forward" to open source is that he believes that in order for open source projects to flourish, there must be a developer group interested in it, and this group must have sufficient capabilities to contribute to the project.

Let's look at Linux. The reason why Linux is open source is that every developer needs such an operating system, and a considerable number of people are able to contribute to it.

But according to analysis given by industry analysts, if GitHub launches a paid program, developers' interest will be greatly reduced; if the open source project of GitHub App is only developed through add-ons/extensions, then the open source of GitHub project will not make much sense.

So the “Maybe” that the GitHub director said may really be just a “Maybe”. After all, no one knows better than them how much value open source can bring.

Definition of open source

The concept of open source has existed before the birth of computers. The earliest open source may have occurred in the field of "eating". In order to survive and improve the quality of food, humans learned to share recipes. The currently more recognized definition of open source was proposed by Bruce Perens, the founder of Debian:

Free Distribution:

• Anyone who obtains the source code is allowed to redistribute it freely.

Source Code:

• When distributing executable files of a program, they must be accompanied by complete source code or a convenient way to obtain the source code later.

Derived Works:

• People can modify the source code and redistribute it under the same license agreement.

Integrity of the Author's Source Code:

• This means that the modified version must be distinguished from the original code with a different version number to ensure the integrity of the original code.

No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups:

• Open source software may not be restricted based on gender, group, country, ethnicity, etc., but there are exceptions if it is required by law (for example, the US government restricts the export of high-encryption software).

No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor:

• This means that commercial use cannot be restricted.

Distribution of License:

• If the software is redistributed, it must be distributed under the same terms.

License Must Not Be Specific to a Product:

• If multiple programs are combined into a set of software, then when an open source program is distributed separately, it must also meet the open source conditions.

License Must Not Restrict Other Software:

• When an open source software is distributed together with other non-open source software (for example, on the same CD), the licensing conditions of the other software must not be restricted to comply with the open source license.

License Must Be Technology-Neutral:

• This means that a license agreement should not be limited to being in electronic format; a license agreement in paper form should also be considered valid.

In the software industry, the concepts of free software, open source software and free software are often confused to varying degrees. Most people fail to sort out the logical relationship between them, which has caused certain misunderstandings and triggered a number of wrong decisions.

But in fact, to put it simply, free software is not necessarily open source, and open source software is not necessarily free. This is easy for everyone to understand.

Strictly speaking, open source software and free software are two different concepts. Any software that meets the definition of open source software can be called open source software (open source software). Free software is a stricter concept than open source software, so all free software is open source, but not all open source software is "free".

Although the attitude of freedom is to encourage people to break through the cage and walls to welcome the openness of thought, and to strive to share and demonstrate their own technology and principles, rather than being complacent about their so-called "technology" for the sake of petty profits and being self-contained, is free software necessarily free?

We can't generalize either.

Every contributor to free software is of course the developer and free user of the software, but for ordinary users, this is not so certain. Ordinary users generally need services rather than software. Software may be free, but services are never free.

The value of open source

For many people, when it comes to open source, they think of "free" and "non-professional software". But in fact, with the development of open source, now "open source" has become one of the best growth models for technology development.

It can be said that without open source, many technology companies would not be able to reach today's industry heights, such as Google, Facebook and Linux we mentioned earlier.

In order to allow more people to use excellent products and enable technology or projects to work together and develop and upgrade rapidly, we cannot do without the value brought by open source.

The reason why American technology companies are keen on open source has a lot to do with culture. If a company does not have an open source project, it will be questioned that the company only wants to take, but does not make due contributions to the industry and the ecosystem.

So from the perspective of the enterprise, open source can not only establish a brand image, but also attract talents and recruit employees through open source projects. In a broader sense, open source even has certain strategic significance for enterprises.

For example, Android initially caught up with iOS through open source and viral spread.

From a personal perspective, trying open source also has two prominent meanings.

First, it helps improve your own coding skills. Since it is an open source project, you must try your best to show your best skills when writing code, which will force you to make the code more concise and easy to understand. Secondly, after your code is open source, others can also give you some targeted suggestions to help you optimize your code.

Secondly, you can demonstrate your abilities through open source projects. Although GitHub is now being ruined by "people with ulterior motives", it still has a certain reference value for corporate recruitment. If an individual has a good open source project, it will definitely be a good plus point during the interview.

What do you think about open source?