Open-source Software Enables Remote Work and Collaboration
3/30/2020
You’re sitting at home in your pajamas, sipping a coffee reading this article and listening to a video conference. Did you know you were using open-source software to work from home?
Thanks to the internet and collaborative development models, multi-billion-dollar businesses rely and have even been built upon open-source software –including CTI! Zoom, Slack, your web browser (https://github.com/chromium/chromium), source code tooling (https://git-scm.com), company file share (https://github.com/nextcloud), firewall (https://github.com/pfsense/), payment processing (https://github.com/stripe), your financial institution’s security (https://twofactorauth.org), food production and manufacturing (https://www.ros.org), perhaps even your voice-over-IP phones (http://www.speex.org/) all rely in some manner on open software. Even the very underpinnings of the internet are open standards (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1122) that enable robust integration, security, and flexible development. Without these libraries, standards, and tools many businesses would halt operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The next-time you’re pushing the button on your coffee maker, take a moment to think about how difficult it would be to get repaired – you’d likely just buy a new one! But, if the design were publicly available you might be able to fix it and save some money. The same applies to government software! Open-source powers commerce and CTI aims to bring the same openness to all customers we support.