Evolution of Open Source at Netflix

jeremy · 10-29-2015, 10:19 AM

Quote:

When we started our Netflix Open Source (aka NetflixOSS) Program several years ago, we didn’t know how it would turn out. We did not know whether our OSS contributions would be used, improved, or ignored; whether we’d have a community of companies and developers sending us feedback; and whether middle-tier vendors would integrate our solutions into theirs. The reasons for starting the OSS Programs were shared previously here.

Fast forward to today. We have over fifty open source projects, ranging from infrastructural platform components to big data tools to deployment automation. Over time, our OSS site became very busy with more and more components piling on. Now, even more components are on the path to being open.

While many of our OSS projects are being successfully used across many companies all over the world, we got a very clear signal from the community that it was getting harder to figure out which projects were useful for a particular company or a team; which were fully independent; and which were coupled together. The external community was also unclear about which components we (Netflix) continued to invest and support, and which were in maintenance or sunset mode. That feedback was very useful to us, as we’re committed in making our OSS Program a success.

We recently updated our Netflix Open Source site on Github pages. It does not yet address all of the feedback and requests we received, but we think it’s moving us in the right direction:

More at Netflix...

--jeremy