Kevin Kelleher’s article on GigaOm this morning titled 2009: Year of the Hacker made me think back to the rise of open source after the Internet crash of 2001. In the aftermath of the crash, many experienced software developers were out of work for a period of time ranging from weeks to years. Some of them threw themselves into open source projects and, in some cases, created their next job with the expertise they developed around a particular open source project.
We are still in a tense and ambiguous part of the current downturn where, while many developers are getting laid off, some of them are immediately being picked back up by other companies that are in desperate need for them. However, many other developers are not immediately finding work. If the downturn gets worse, the number of out of work developers increases.
If they take a lesson from the 2001 – 2003 time frame, some subset of them will choose to get deeply in an open source related project. Given the range of established open source projects, the opportunity to do this today is much more extensive than it was seven years ago. In addition, most software companies – especially Internet-related ones – now have robust API’s and/or open source libraries that they actively encourage third parties to work with for free. The SaaS-based infrastructure that exists along with maturing source code repositories add to the fun. The ability to hack something interesting together based on an established company’s infrastructure is omnipresent and is one of the best ways to “apply for a job” at an interesting company.
We are thinking hard about how to do this correctly at a number of our new investments, including companies like Oblong, Gnip, and a new cloud-computing related startup we are funding in January. Of course, many of our older investments such as NewsGator and Rally Software already have extensive API libraries and actively encourage developers to work with them. And of course, there are gold standards of open source projects like my friends at WordPress and masters of the API like Twitter.
If you are a developer and want help engaging with any of these folks, or have ideas about how this could work better, feel free to drop me an email.
Brad – great post and I think you nailed it… open-source + web are big this year and I'm betting that things that do open-source + web + social change are going to do some of the most innovative game-changing stuff of the decade.
Happy holidays to you and yours!
Comment by Michael Lewkowitz — December 26, 2008 @ 3:09 am
All I can say is that I cannot wait to start using some of this technology at work. Few of us that use technology daily (pun intended) know that the capabilities of our current state will see drastic changes over the next few years. Flash memory, mouseless computing, cloud base – I think everything we have been driving toward will soon go "public" and work will take on a whole new platform
Comment by Amber — December 26, 2008 @ 3:17 am
Ahem….MindTouch.
MindTouch Deki happens to be the MOST popular open source enterprise collaboration platform. Ranked in the top 0.001% of open source projects in the World (SourceForge.net). Other than proprietary competitors, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, there is not a more popular collaboration tool. http://www.MindTouch.com
Perhaps more importantly is the Web Oriented Architecture (WOA) employed in developing MindTouch. Meaning, in part, everything is inherently a web-service – making extended the platform very easy. http://mindtouch.com/Technology
Comment by Roebot — December 27, 2008 @ 4:29 am
MindTouch is a great example. Aaron – you / Mindtouch should definitely benefit from the “re-rise”.
Comment by Brad Feld — December 27, 2008 @ 5:44 am
I concur.
As evidence we yielded a 37% revenue growth in q3 and 79% revenue growth in q4 with a 6 month young sales team. I'm anxious about the new year, who isn't, but I think we're in a good position to continue this kind of growth.
Comment by Roebot — December 27, 2008 @ 6:54 am
I concur.
As evidence we yielded a 37% revenue growth in q3 and 79% revenue growth in q4. I'm anxious about the new year, who isn't, but I think we're in a good position to continue this kind of growth.
Comment by Roebot — December 27, 2008 @ 6:57 am
Twitter will be Master of the API when I don't have to give out my password to every third-party app that asks for it. Why can't apps link out to the Twitter site to collect my "ok" the way Facebook does?
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Pingback by Innovation is a continual process of creative destruction of the norm. | Venture Adventure — December 28, 2008 @ 6:23 am
I'm focusing on a few open source projects over this next three months. Finding some quality developers are looking for interesting projects, much more than even a year ago.
Comment by Andrew Hyde — January 7, 2009 @ 4:54 am
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Pingback by Open Source as a SaaS Endgame | CloudAve — January 15, 2009 @ 10:45 am
Even though I do not have any experience as a developer, I do love many of the applications I have been able to use through the open source platform. I also see a very bright future for some of the applications that will be available due to the open source platform. Freedom at its best!
Comment by Dave — January 16, 2009 @ 5:40 pm