I open source whatever I can. The main reason is that if I don’t, the question quite commonly becomes why have your written your code instead of using this OSS library I found. The main reason is of-course that the particular library either didn’t exist at the time OR didn’t do the things we needed done in order to get our project out quickly enough.
Whenever I do OSS stuff I try to fill it with as many docs as possible e.g. checkout the docs for https://alm-tools.github.io/ https://typestyle.github.io/ https://formstate.github.io/ so people that use it internally also get more value out of it. So it just joins the ranks of other OSS library I found that people may or may not find useful and are free to copy ideas / code from 🌹
Its very much the same reason that big companies OSS stuff nowadays e.g. Google’s TensorFlow is OSS. It helps establish internal standards (which are there to get stuff done) as industry best, because in the absence of the making internal stuff public you will always have friction of internal vs. external best practices. So OSS whenever you can.
Here is a summary of reasons to OSS.
- Better docs. People rarely publicly open source stuff with poor docs. They do it too often internally.
- Greater peer review for bugs. Security through obscurity is a fallacy.
- Idea sharing. Someone might just come along and give you an even better idea for your code’s objective.
- Making the world a better place / sharing what you have learnt.
- Having public OSS repositories keeps people *inside* the company from reinventing the wheel. When you only have internal OSS people will too easily just create a new version with copy pasting instead of discussing / improving what’s already there.
- Many developers have home side projects because after all that is how we learn / improve our skills. Having OSS work libraries allows them to become more comfortable with the code base in their spare time. Otherwise they end up having to use one lib at work and another lib at home. Self learning at home is an order of magnitude better than learning at work (where you are focused on delivery and not learning).
I strongly believe that 20% time is not optional but it doesn’t have to be cut out exactly if your company culture is comfortable enough.
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