February 9, 2024 | Blog

There’s always something inspiring whenever we hear business stories with humble beginnings. But it’s another story if we talk about the ideology that challenges the norm, goes against the grain, and eventually revolutionizes the tech ecosystem through its open source and community principles.  

Let’s talk about the origins of this disruptive philosophy. It was the ‘rebellious act’ of Richard Stallman, the activist and the man behind the Free and Open Source Principles, who created a breakthrough that allowed many software developers and programmers to be part of an open community sharing and improving their software until it became mainstream. 

Today, many businesses in every industry rely on open source software to achieve their digital transformation initiatives. They depend on open source solutions to run their IT Infrastructure and host their applications such as Linux, PostgreSQL, Nginx, Python, OpenJDK, containers, etc. to some extent, build their business around it like in the mobile space, where Android is set as a baseline for their operating system.  

As we celebrate Free Open Source Software Month, IT Group, Inc., and its technological partner, Red Hat, share five things you need to know to improve your IT infrastructure and the importance of open source software in tech and business. 

The revolutionary ideology of the Open Source Principle changes the tech industry for the better and eventually helps many businesses from various industries how to improve their business.

Open and Secure

For a person with a limited to no background in tech, it is often asked why being open means secure in the Open Source World. Our ITG’s Head of Enterprise IT Infrastructure Solutions, Ryan Ching, has a simple answer to it. “It’s Open [and transparent], that is why it’s more secure. So, if your source code is open for everybody to see, it simply means that more eyes can scrutinize the code, which leads to corrections and in return better software development and more secure solutions,” he said. 

Red Hat, an Enterprise Open Source Company and ITG’s solution partner, believes in the importance of open source software and its principles. They understand that aside from the security it brings, the Open Source Principle “unlocks the world’s potential”. For over 20 years, ITG and Red Hat have continued their crusades, along with its advocates, providing infrastructure and developer solutions that test the boundaries of what technology can create and offer to the world. 

EnterpriseDB, ITG’s Enterprise Open Source Database solution, offers an enterprise-class data management platform and tools based on the open source database PostgreSQL. It helps organizations, especially businesses with large amounts of data, to master data management at scale and ensure availability and reliability across all deployments.

Collaborative Work

Through being free and open, the concept of the Open Source Principle fosters an environment that champions collaboration. Everyone can pitch their ideas, fix errors, add new features, and improve the established or existing code. The collaborative work invites talents from all over the world to be part of projects that can create significant change not only within the open source community but eventually, evolve into new software that everyone can use like WordPress, Mozilla Firefox, and even the powerful operating system, Linux, which ITG offers Red Hat Linux Enterprise that connects you to Red Hat’s extensive hardware, software, and cloud partner ecosystem, and comes with 24×7 support. 

Solid Community

As collaborative work gets bigger, a solid community was built and created in the Open Source World. Thanks to Stallman and the supporters of the Open Source Principle, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) was established. It’s a non-profit organization that has a “worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and defend the rights of all software users”. With the help of FSF, it sponsors the GNU (GNU’s not Unix) projects, helps the General Public License, and implements ‘copyleft’ idealism, which countermoves the usual copyright framework, making codes and/or software free from proprietary. 

“Every year we collect thousands of copyright assignments from individual software developers and corporations working on free software. We register these copyrights with the US copyright office and enforce the license under which we distribute free software — typically the GNU General Public License,”  FSF said. “We do this to ensure that free software distributors respect their obligations to pass on the freedom to all users, to share, study, and modify the code.” 

ITG, along with its partner, Red Hat, also offers training and certifications to support the community, where employees of your organization will be equipped and industry-ready in the Open Source World.

Also read:  ‘World Data Privacy Day and the Importance of Securing Your Data  (Part I)

Transparency 

The premise of the Open Source Principle is simply open to all and transparent to everyone. Codes that are free and readily available to the public. As Ching emphasized earlier, it can be easily scrutinized. No hidden codes. No hidden functions. No surprises. Simple and plain codes for everyone to see.

Open source code is more of an access game, where contributors lend their expertise, maintainers facilitate the projects, and committers modify the source codes—all at once. Red Hat supports this kind of transparency, which validates how authentic and reliable you can get with the Open Source Principle. 

“We make software improvements more accessible through open and iterative collaboration with customers, contributors, competitors, and partners. We believe active engagement in open source communities encourages inclusive and diverse perspectives, leading us to discover and integrate the best ideas into upstream repositories,” Red Hat said. 

Also read:  ‘World Data Privacy Day and the Importance of Securing Your Data  (Part II)

Customization

Open Source Principle is a breakthrough in the tech industry that many businesses benefited from since then. Ching also told exactly how beneficial open source software is for many organizations where you tailor the system according to your needs. “Instead of spending time, investing money in finding the right resources to build software from scratch, on top of maintaining and securing it as an additional cost, open source system allows organizations to build on top of what is readily available, which they can improve and customize it based on their requirements,” he said. “Thus, freeing its own resources to focus on other innovative solutions would put the organization ahead of its industry.”

Let’s Venture Together in Celebration of Free Open Source Software Month

IT Group Inc. is one of the leading IT Solution Partners in the Philippines and the ASEAN region and has been the recipient of many Red Hat awards, including the Top Strategic Partner of the Year and Partner of the Year for several consecutive years. ITG believes in and supports the advocacy of free open source software, which is why, Red Hat, along with other Enterprise Open Source Companies, trusted to venture with us over the year.We want to share its innovative solution with you and ensure success in the deployment and maintenance of open source technologies in your organization as we are your certified and trusted partner of this Enterprise Organization. 

As our Tech Expert and ITG’s Head of Enterprise IT Infrastructure Solutions Ryan Ching said, “Instead of only relying on the [open source] community to help you when there are issues where there are no SLAs, our value comes in as an expert for this technologies.  A reliable partner that can deploy and maintain Enterprise Open Source Solutions in any organization, providing support and services with SLAs. This value that the Enterprise Open Source company and ITG provide is what any enterprise customers would be looking for to remain compliant with standard practices and policies.”