An entire culture has developed from this idea, which has contributed significantly to the success of the World Wide Web. And we don’t want to stand idly by and watch.
History
Open source has a long tradition in software development. The first “tinkerers” who screwed together hardware in their garages and wrote small programs quickly realised that they were much more productive together than alone. They exchanged building instructions and discussed and further developed software. And everyone benefited.
Around 1990, Tim Berners-Lee developed the concept of hypertext at CERN: a transfer protocol (HTTP) and the markup language (HTML). A lot of money could have been made by selling large companies expensive licences for their decentralised intranet. Fortunately, however, the decision was made in favour of open source, which paved the way for a global and freely available Internet. This tradition became one of the most important pillars of the WWW.
10% for the community
Open source has become an integral part of IT. And even the big tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft are constantly making the code of large projects available. But anyone who thinks that only the really big players can “afford” to do this is way off the mark. Some of the most important open source representatives started out as small side projects by lone fighters or small groups. WordPress, for example.
It has always been clear to us that we also want to play an active role in the open source world. After all, our WordPress plugins already have over 35,000 active installations.
Without commitment, however, it remains an idea. That’s why we recently decided to invest 10% of our working time in open source projects. Of course, this includes maintenance and support for our existing projects, but we also have a bunch of ideas for further projects.
Open source as an advantage for our customers
A few months ago I was asked an interesting question: how can you feed a family from open source?
To be honest, I had never really thought about it. My answer was correspondingly meagre. But the question still accompanied me for a while: what are the benefits of open source projects for us and our customers?
1. Reputation
Let’s not kid ourselves. Whether as a large agency or as a freelancer, we all invest far too much of our resources in acquisition. But instead of hiring sales managers or ramping up marketing, we convince with what counts: our work.
With open source WordPress plugins in particular, we reach an enormous number of potential customers and show what is possible through a collaboration with Say Hello.
2. Code quality
As a developer, it is always an advantage to maintain a certain scepticism towards your work. Should I have structured it differently? Was the framework the right choice? Are there possible security gaps? In the worst case, this can lead to you keeping your code to yourself.
We deliberately take a different approach here and make as much as possible publicly accessible. On the one hand, this transparency forces us to work cleanly, and on the other hand, we always receive enormously valuable feedback from the community.
3. Further training
The web is developing at breakneck speed. In order to stay on the ball, it is extremely important to experiment with new technologies or test new concepts. And complete projects from concept to launch are much more sustainable than experiments or tests. Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to our customers to charge for this time via their projects.
Open source projects offer us this freedom. We can try out new technologies or deepen existing ones without being tied to a budget or a deadline. And here, too, we can count on feedback and help from the entire community.
For many developers around the world, open source has become an important piece of the puzzle in their day-to-day work. This is also the case for us.
