Surprising Thing about Open Source

' ***************************************
' ALL YOUR CODE BELONGS TO US

10 PRINT "Hello. Welcome to Open Source."
20 PRINT "Downloading...."
30 GOTO 10

' END PROGRAM
' ***************************************

Lately, I have been moving a bunch of stuff around. Reorganizing things at home. Looking at my current career and things in my personal life. Changing things in the online world of the Internet. It’s this sort of ‘spring cleaning’ mentality that’s gotten me to look at all my stuff on my computer. I’ve finally gotten around to organizing my codebase collection and putting it on Github, the nexus of geeks and programmers online. While lines and lines of blog posts have been written upon the subject, I will write down the confirming words of someone who’s made the transition - it’s worth doing.

At the face of it, git is just git. Should it make a difference where you host it? If that’s your only goal, then you may not notice much. But just like there’s only one real Silicon Valley, there’s only one Github when it comes to code online… it’s the place to go. There is a certain critical mass of quality code, programmers, and social community that seeks and informs. It encourages the best to work and collaborate there and is definitely a great place to be. It’s one thing to know it and another to experience it.

But I did make one surprising discovery along the way to Github about open sourcing your code. It’s great working with others online and seeing everyone else’s work. When I was much younger (not to make myself sound old), I’ve long wondered why people would go to such lengths and work hard on code only to then give it away. I would happily look and borrow code from there often. And I would be puzzled as to why great new stuff appears there. And I finally get it. Setting your code free for others to see and use just feels great! Even all the other benefits of open source that end up helping you personally seem to fall away (such as others reviewing and improving your code, a path to a brighter career, or the bragging rights on creating something cool) once you realize it. It’s that sort of selfless giving is the prime motivator for wanting to give it away.

I feel an undeniable sense of relief on putting out some code, even if I cringe to look at how old or awful it may be to my eyes. (Maybe that’s just a sign of how much I’ve hopefully progressed over the years.) It just might be the one bit that someone needs to get something working or inspire another thought. I think we forget that not everyone online are expert programmers; some are just getting their start… just like I did when I wrote some of this. For now, I’m just putting it out there and hoping that it can help someone along that needs their start. It just might take a bit to get used to the fact that my work is in the open. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Let’s all give back to the next generation, just like those before us.