TE
TechEcho
Home24h TopNewestBestAskShowJobs
GitHubTwitter
Home

TechEcho

A tech news platform built with Next.js, providing global tech news and discussions.

GitHubTwitter

Home

HomeNewestBestAskShowJobs

Resources

HackerNews APIOriginal HackerNewsNext.js

© 2025 TechEcho. All rights reserved.

On Releasing Your Company's Software as Open Source

8 pointsby estherschindlerover 15 years ago

3 comments

jacquesmover 15 years ago
I read this article as a series of thinly veiled reasons that should discourage people from open sourcing anything corporate.<p>Here is the abstract:<p>- it will take some effort to release an in house package to the community<p>- you may have to get approval from legal and that is no fun way to spend an afternoon<p>If that hasn't discouraged you from this path of folly then:<p>- you may have to do some cleanup work before a release<p>- If you should decide against all odds that 'Yes' you do want to release your in house code you must be a bit of 'arrogant', after all who are you to think that others will value your code.<p>Really, I find the tone of this article hard to stomach.<p>Not a single positive aspect of releasing your code as open source is high-lit, not even for contrast purposes.<p>Let's have some balance here:<p>Releasing corporate open source is great because:<p>- you will potentially have a lot more eyes looking through your source code, fixing bugs and cleaning things<p>- you may find that some of the contributions parallel your own in house needs effectively reducing your own development cost<p>- if you should decide you want to 'clean up' your code before releasing it you are likely to end up with better abstraction, in fact, you should probably have worked along those lines all the time.<p>- if you take from the open source community (the example is in house extensions to a framework) and you think there might be a general use case for that code then it won't cost you a lot to put it out there, not compared to the time you originally saved by basing your code on open source development in the first place. Take a lot, give back a little seems to be a pretty good deal.
评论 #807941 未加载
andrewljohnsonover 15 years ago
The article is trite and uninformed.
shykesover 15 years ago
I'm curious. Has anybody here released open-source code as part of a clear business strategy? Other than selling support and maintenance for it.
评论 #808053 未加载
评论 #809020 未加载
评论 #808145 未加载