006-8_SDT055.qxp_Layout 1 12/21/21 3:04 PM Page 8
8
SD Times
January 2022
www.sdtimes.com
Open Source 2022: The Year of Awareness BY JAVIER PEREZ
The subject of predicting the future reminds me of a quote from the late comedian, George Burns: “I look to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.” Open-source software is pervasive across all industry verticals, and today, more companies use and develop software than ever before, and we don’t need a crystal ball to predict that in 2022, we’ll see even more growth. A common theme for next year is not only the growth of open-source technologies but also the incremental awareness that we will see across industries. Awareness will fuel open source use and expansion; therefore, 2022 will be the year of awareness and growth. Here are my top open source software predictions for 2022: Demand for open source skills is going from hot to hotter. The demand for full stack developers will continue to grow because of an increase in popular open-source options, as well as the variety of stacks used in software development, operations, and data science. Experience in cloud environments and DevOps tooling will continue to be in high demand, just like demand for Kubernetes, Python, PyTorch, and open-source data technologies. Experienced professionals will have plenty of opportunities to change jobs and poaching of experts in open source will increase, just as expected compensation. Greater awareness of open source security and prevention of supply chain attacks. More CEOs and IT executives will realize how much open source is used in their organizations, and that realization will have a positive impact on security budgets. Greater awareness of the thousands of open- source libraries used in all softJavier Perez is Chief OSS Evangelist at OpenLogic by Perforce.
ware development will result in an increased use of tools to scan for vulnerabilities in open-source software. Organizations with more open-source security awareness will keep up with the latest software versions and patches, improving their overall security posture. Software supply chain attacks occur when threat actors infiltrate third-party software to gain access via an unpatched open source vulnerability or inject malicious software. Thanks to awareness and tooling, in 2022 we’ll see an improvement in prevention and the growth of open-source tools, such as digital signing services to prevent supply chain attacks. Widespread adoption of containers and Kubernetes. We’ll see increased adoption of standards for container format and runtime. This adoption will allow for expanded use of compatible open-source container formats from the likes of Docker and Podman under the same standards as those described in the Open Container Initiative. A similar transition from bare metal to virtual machines (VMs), which took place over the last couple of decades, is now being repeated with the use of containers and Kubernetes as well as completing the stack with Kubernetes operators. Despite the learning curve and technical support required, the most successful open-source project in recent times, Kubernetes, is poised to reach new adoption highs in 2022. Time for awareness and implementation of ethical AI. Opensource software for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), and data technologies are reaching mass adoption. 2022 will see AI open-source tooling become increasingly available, including the intersection with containers in growing projects such as Kubeflow. The prediction for 2022 is a significant growth in terms of awareness and implementation of ethical AI. Open-source tools for
ML/DL algorithms to keep them interpretable, explainable, and fair is the ultimate goal. The incremental use of these open-source tools will go a long way in improving and increasing trust in AI applications. InnerSource will no longer be a secret. More InnerSource projects wait on the horizon — and not only for technology companies. The prediction includes financial institutions, public sector, research centers, and many more. The use of open source software development best practices and the establishment of open source-like culture behind closed doors in non-open-source software will continue to expand. As a first step before open sourcing projects or just as the latest best practices, organizations will continue to see the benefits of open collaboration, contributions, and velocity. InnerSource will also increase the use of open-source software and with it, the need for expert advice and support across more open-source packages. Positive advancement in diversity and inclusion. Open-source software has always been at the forefront of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Being open with freedom has been part of the open source fabric for over 30 years. The open source communities and foundations have risen to the challenge of reflecting the social changes in our society into their projects. In 2022, we’ll see the advancement of and direct results from large number of diversity and inclusion initiatives. A few examples of these initiatives from open source communities include GitHub Diversity, Open Source Diversity, Opensource.com, TODO group, The Linux Foundation SDDI, IBM’s Call for Code, Apache Diversity, and many more. And while we are on the topic of awareness in 2022, let’s wish everyone more awareness in other important topics outside open-source software; more mental health awareness, more selfawareness and of course, more personal development. A toast for that, and for a healthy and successful 2022. z
