Does Your Workplace Encourage Open Source?

Publish Date: Sep 16 '19

13 9

I recently attended a conference where Jason Lengstorf gave a talk called "You Belong Here: How to Make Open Source More Open". Over the course of the talk he labelled the ways the Gatsby team had encouraged OSS, and how to make it more accessible and inclusive to a greater audience of people. I was curious how many people are working for companies/teams that have this same attitude.

Does your workplace encourage you to contribute to open source? If they do, do they give you time during work hours for working on open source projects? Do they have any open source initiatives of their own?

Comments 9 total

Lou FrancoSep 16, 2019

I would say, yes, they do support me working on open-source, but mostly as a way to get my job done. So, for work, I have fixed bugs in open-source projects we depend on and I have open-sourced some of our code (that I had to write for us -- the open-sourcing wasn't much more work).

Without asking, I could have forked the projects and fixed the bugs for us, but with a small process, I can just contribute it back (which is the preferable way, but requires some permission).
- Thiago ArraisSep 17, 2019
  
  Without asking, I could have forked the projects and fixed the bugs for us, but with a small process, I can just contribute it back
  
  AND also shares the burden of maintainance with the community, which makes total business sense even from a totally selfish point of view. Just imagine the cost of internally backporting lots of little patches.
Gergely PolonkaiSep 17, 2019
We definitely do. I personally open sourced some tools we use, and we regularly contribute fixes and features to open source projects.

Obviously, internal stuff is first. But if we are in the middle of a slow period, i encourage colleagues to
- Refactor our code for performance
- Write extra documentation
- Write new open source stuff or contribute to existing ones they like
(not necessarily in this order).

Also, in such cases they are not limited to projects we benefit from because, on the long run, this can give them more ideas and insight of the languages they use.
- Keith BrewsterSep 17, 2019
  
  This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping companies were doing!
Matteo JoliveauSep 17, 2019

Yes. We both contribute to some projects we use and open-source our own stuff, like our time tracking web application, Ruby clients for OneSignal and the League of Legends API and some other minor projects.
rhymesSep 17, 2019
This very site is open source. I'm lucky to work on it so I'd definitely say that DEV is a company that believes in OS...
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- Keith BrewsterSep 17, 2019
  
  DEV being open source is what drove me here in the first place! (also Medium's terrible pay wall)
Michiel HendriksSep 17, 2019

Not really. All of our software is based on Open Source, but I am the only one contributes and gives back. The rest cannot even bother to file a bug if they think they found one.

Most developers do not care at all about Open Source, and neither does the company.
Christian LedermannSep 17, 2019

Contributing back to projects we use is not a problem, I do it regularly. Open sourcing in house projects is a bit of jumping thru hoops getting sign offs, etc. (but it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission)

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