What is Open Source Why is it important?
What is Open Source Why is it important
Open source means that a work is shared with the community and not kept secret. Open source developments provide advantages in reducing costs and ensuring sustainability.
If a company or person developing a product shares all sources about how the product works as open source, that is, transparently, it can quickly gain consumer trust. Because details about how the product works can be examined and it can be foreseen whether there is a security vulnerability. Additionally, if a product is successful, it can be predicted that competition will increase. In this case, depending only on the person or people who developed the product may be risky and costly. If the product is open source, anyone can add a new feature and experiment with the product. If one of these trials produces better results than the original product, consumers can start using it. In short, it can be said that the aim is to ensure a fair competition environment and to give the consumer the initiative to use the best product. At the same time, high costs for the development team can be minimized.
Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin as an open source product to benefit from all the advantages exemplified above. One of the underlying dynamics that makes Bitcoin quickly respected, understood and seen as a reliable store of value is the open source code principle. Anyone who wants can look at how Bitcoin works, examine it, and if they wish, copy the entire infrastructure to make it better.
Thanks to the open source code, Bitcoin's operating principles are constantly tested. Bitcoin can always stay up to date. Projects aiming to create a better system by changing the basic working principle of Bitcoin have not been successful, and it is proven again and again that Bitcoin's working principles still offer the best solution. In this way, Bitcoin can constantly keep itself updated and when it has a better solution suggestion, it can integrate these suggestions.
The history of open source sharing is older than Bitcoin. However, previous examples are based on products of centralized companies. The fact that Bitcoin is decentralized, that is, a technology that belongs entirely to the community, has created a change in this field.
The cryptocurrency ecosystem that developed after Bitcoin adopted decentralization and open source development because it was inspired by Bitcoin. Thus, we witnessed the formation of an ecosystem where startups are managed, controlled and supervised by the community. In a community-driven ecosystem, developments could not be expected to remain secret.
Thanks to open source code, competition between startups has become fairer compared to traditional industries. If a startup developed a better product, others copied it and tried to add innovations and make a difference. Thus, not only did the diversity in the cryptocurrency ecosystem increase, but the innovation made by one initiative enabled the entire ecosystem to progress collectively.
In short, just as Satoshi found the ideal cryptographic money formula with Bitcoin, it can be said that the open source sharing principle found its ideal form in the decentralization infrastructure. The combination of these ideals has enabled the rapid growth of an ecosystem that is dynamic, innovative and developed by the community for the community.
