Open Source Software is Eating the World

The following article has been contributed by Jia Wei Sun, QA Engineer, SUSE China.

Ten years ago I was a Computer Science freshman in college. When I heard there the following sentence for the first time: “open source software is eating the world”, I immediately thought that this would be truly unbelievable. But during the past ten years, open source software was changing our lives in all kinds of areas.

Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash

The first LC3 (LinuxCon & ContainerCon & CloudOpen conferences) for China was held on June 19th &20th 2017 in Beijing. It was my honor to attend it as a member of the open source software world. Not only that open source companies and also traditional CS&IT companies delivered wonderful keynotes and speeches during the conference. The conferences also brought many news about the latest projects and products, and uncovered some brilliant ideas and deep insight.

Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, smart home systems and software defined networking (SDN) were the hottest words and all around at LC3 conference rooms and hallways. IoT technology makes it possible to connect all kinds of devices to the Internet, such as light, microwave, washing machine, even a car (Toyota announced the release of the first IoT car with an Automotive Grade Linux (AGL) system installed ), for a smarter life in a smarter environment. SDN will help Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide a faster network to meet the requirements for a constantly increasing amount of devices caused by IoT – but with lower price. Cloud computing and cloud storage will help to store and analyze the big data collected from the end-users to help make all devices more intelligent. All of these new and hype technologies will help building the smart home system and smart world for us end-users.

In my opinion, the CS&IT world is definitely changing now. No open source company is acting independently, the open source community is everywhere, and we are all pieces of the big Open source jigsaw that somehow fit together.

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

During the past ten years, Android and other open source software have already changed the world and our daily life. And in the next ten year, open source software will not only change the world, but it “is eating the world”.