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Open Source

Open source tooling has become the bedrock of every enterprise organization.Open source standards and specifications are rapidly providing the nutrients needed for a healthy and vibrant API life cycle. If your organization simply sees open source as a way of bypassing the costs of commercial solutions, then you aren’t realizing the full business potential of open source.

Most people associate open source with tooling, but there are a range of elements that can make it change the way that you do business as part of your API-first transformation.

Elements

  • Tooling - Open source tooling and packaging e is widespread across enterprise organizations, but teams rarely measure how it is used to stitch together procedures across operations.
  • Specifications - OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, JSON Schema, GraphQL, and other API specifications have become standard machine-readable contracts for conducting business through self-service and automation, helping to stabilize our operations.
  • Standards - Internet and industry standards are beginning to stabilize finance and healthcare–the top two industries. They provide more structure for these industries in the EU and U.S. and offer a model for other countries and industries to follow.
  • Content - Open source doesn’t stop with tooling, specifications, and standards. It is increasingly used to produce content and media, changing the way enterprises produce and consume APIs across teams.
  • Licensing - The legal licensing for tooling, specifications, standards, and content is how most people define the quality of open source. While licensing agreements do set the tone for what is possible, they are just the starting point for real value.
  • Contributions - Open source solutions are only as strong as their contributors. Their worth depends on the passion, skills, and the free time of people who know the domain the open source is applied to and have invested in understanding what is being built.
  • Collaboration - Without collaboration and coordination in open source tooling, specifications, standards, and content, you end up with something that is rarely active and alive, and won’t be around for very long.
  • Communication - Communication between open source contributors and consumers can be difficult because the usual gates associated with proprietary offerings don’t exist, making open channels essential for health.

Every enterprise is an open source consumer. You will begin to see the real benefits of open source across your teams when you become a contributor. You are the one with domain expertise within your industry, and that could really benefit open source tooling, specifications, standards, and content it uses. Don’t let the lawyers at your company scare you off from participating in open source communities. Do the work to bring awareness across teams, and also among leadership. At the very least, start by making sure you are aware of how open source is currently being used.