What does “open source” mean?

When a project is open source, that means anybody can view, use, modify, and distribute your project for any purpose. These permissions are enforced through an open source license.

Open source is powerful because it lowers the barriers to adoption, allowing ideas to spread quickly.

To understand how it works, imagine your friend is having a potluck, and you bring a cherry pie.

• Everybody tries the pie (use)
• The pie is a hit! They ask you for the recipe, which you provide (view)
• One friend, Alex, who’s a pastry chef, suggests reducing the sugar (modify)
• Another friend, Lisa, asks to use it for a dinner next week (distribute) By comparison, a closed source process would be going to a restaurant and ordering a slice of cherry pie. You must pay a fee to eat the pie, and the restaurant probably won’t give you their recipe. If you copied their pie exactly and sold it under your own name, the restaurant could take action against you.

Why do people open source their work?

One of the most rewarding experiences I get out of using and collaborating on open source comes from the relationships that I build with other developers facing many of the same problems I am. — @kentcdodds, “How getting into Open Source has been awesome for me”

There are many reasons why a person or organization would want to open source a project. Some examples include:

• Collaboration: Open source projects can accept changes from anybody in the world. Exercism, for example, is a programming exercise platform with over 350 contributors.

• Adoption and remixing: Open source projects can be used by anyone for nearly any purpose. People can even use it to build other things. WordPress, for example, started as a fork of an existing project called b2.

• Transparency: Anyone can inspect an open source project for errors or inconsistencies. Transparency matters to governments like Bulgaria or the United States, regulated industries like banking or healthcare, and security software like Let’s Encrypt.

Open source isn’t just for software, either. You can open source everything from data sets to books. Check out GitHub Explore for ideas on what else you can open source.

Should I launch my own open source project?

The short answer is yes, because no matter the outcome, launching your own project is a great way to learn how open source works.

Launching your own open source project

There is no perfect time to open source your work. You can open source an idea, a work in progress, or after years of being closed source.