In development communities, software-as-a-service is all the rage among entrepreneurs — for good reason, too. In 2016 the software-as-a-service and cloud services market is expected to grow by . 18 percent in 2017 This follows several years of growth in the mid-teens percentages. However, another category within the software industry has been critically under-covered in tech publications and is proving to be a uniquely disruptive force in 2017. I am talking about open source entrepreneurship. What is Open Source Entrepreneurship? Open source software refers to software that’s code is publically available, legally. The practice has been around for decades. Typically, open source software was a community passion project and used less often by businesses seeking to protect their intellectual property. Coders and entire communities would come together to optimize code, add features, and drum up interest in the project. The basic idea is that the community as a whole benefits from the interactivity and sharing between the members of that community, who work together to improve the software. While the power of open source software is easily identified, the projects often lack the professional polish and usability to make them viable for business applications. However, that doesn’t mean that businesses can’t harness the power of open source for their own benefit. More often, entrepreneurs are embracing the principles and collaborative elements of open source development to help them improve their own business. There are many benefits to this approach: Using open source code and components within your software can help entrepreneurs build their vision faster and cheaper. While open source code will still need its own quality control in place, it can serve as a foundation for your own customization. Faster launches. Embracing open source communities gives businesses access to a collaborative environment with developers with a range wide of experience. Hiring your own team with similar experience would often be prohibitively expensive. Improved collaboration. The open source community takes pride in its ability to help others. Often, common concepts have in-depth tutorials and guides available for entrepreneurs to use. Access to tutorials and knowledge. Examples of Open Source Entrepreneurship Some well-known brands have been engaging in open source entrepreneurship for decades. , a content management system that currently powers more than on the web, is an open source project. Wordpress 28% of all websites The open source environment has resulted in a very collaborative community that actively develops new components and extendable features for the software. Today, there are more than available for download, extending the functionality of the core offering. 50,000 WordPress plugins Another popular example of open source entrepreneurship is the operating system . Linux got its start as an open source project in 1991, started by Linus Torvalds. The project started as a few basic C files, and by 2015 the core project had grown to more than 18 million lines of source code. Additionally, the Linux development community has created differing versions of the software, known as Distributions. Linux To date, there have been more than released the public. This is a great example of the power of open source software that is embraced by its community. 700 different Linux distributions A more recent example of open source entrepreneurship comes from . Bit is an that enables developers to easily share components and parts from their existing source code with others on their team or the community, and use them across projects. Bit open source project The Bit community hub ( ) is where developers can discover and share React, Node.js and other open-source components written by others across the world. BitSrc Open Source Entrepreneurship and the Future In short, open source entrepreneurship allows companies to launch faster, more effectively, and at a lower cost than businesses that do not embrace open source principles. It provides a foundation of resources that would ordinarily take months or years for businesses to develop internally. Additionally, leveraging the community to troubleshoot and solve complicated issues can lessen the load on internal testing teams. Embracing open source is a new, unique way to approach entrepreneurship but is a choice that we will see many companies making in the future.
