The growth of open source has changed commonly held beliefs about the number of people needed to run critical tools that power technology today.

A prime example of what this actually means can be found in the open-source data transfer utility cURL. The software began as 300 lines of C code 24 years ago and has grown to 172,000 lines today. It is used in billions of global applications, bundled into iOS, Android, Windows 10 and various Linux distros.

Most of today’s smartphones rely on cURL: Gamers use it for Nintendo Switch, Xbox and Sony PS5, and it powers data transfer from cars and drives popular apps, such as YouTube, Instagram, Spotify and Netflix.

It would be natural to assume that such a widely used utility is being run by an army of well-funded developers. In reality, cURL is maintained by one lone programmer, Daniel Stenberg, who works out of a home office in Sweden and relies on a modest stream of donations and volunteer contributors to keep it running. This is the story of open source.

“If cURL wouldn’t have been openly licensed from the beginning, I would never have gotten all the help from contributors, and it would never have taken off,” Stenberg said in an interview. “CURL’s success is the combined effort of a huge community. cURL runs in maybe 10 billion installations, and it also makes me feel a responsibility to a world already full of cURL. I need to make sure it runs fine, does the right things — and does it securely and safely.”

Embraced by Big Tech

The ability of open-source tools to transform entire industries at scale is manifesting itself beyond the impact of a single data utility such as cURL. Major technology providers, including Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft and Google LLC, are leveraging the open-source community to supplement existing services.

Venture capital money is flowing into the open-source business, fueling an ecosystem of startups that is steadily reshaping cloud native, security models and cost structures for innovation.

“Open source is the backbone of digital innovation,” said Arun Chandrasekaran, distinguished vice president and analyst — tech innovation, cloud-native platforms, big data and AI — at Gartner Inc., in an interview with SiliconANGLE. “Open-source software is used in mission-critical IT workloads by more than 95% of the end-user and vendor-side IT organizations worldwide, whether they are aware of it or not.”

The three largest public cloud providers have created programs to expand relationships with startups, many of which are building in the open-source space. The AWS Global Startup Program supports technology and consulting businesses that leverage AWS services. This has allowed the cloud provider to build a startup ecosystem, as seen in theCUBE’s AWS Startup Series, resulting in new solutions for data management, AI, cybersecurity and open cloud-native projects.

Microsoft for Startups was officially launched in 2018, providing sales assistance and Azure credits for fledgling companies. Microsoft has shown an interest in a wide variety of open-source solutions, ranging from provisioning of telecom networks and secure DevOps solutions to diagnostic imaging and digital engagement. The company also has the Free and Open-Source Software fund, or FOSS fund, which provides a direct way for Microsoft engineers to select a project they are passionate about.

Google Cloud’s startup program is backing firms in the travel, healthcare, digital banking and media space. In late January, the company announced a new Google for Startups Cloud Program with an opportunity to cover all cloud costs in the first year of usage for eligible firms.

Google has been particularly active over the past three years in building bridges to the open-source startup world. It created a set of strategic partnerships with Redis Labs, MongoDB, DataStax, Elastic, Neo4j, InfluxData and Confluent in 2019, while offering a share of proceeds for providing services on Google Cloud.

Yet the most prominent example of how Big Tech has embraced the open-source community remains IBM’s purchase of Red Hat for $34 billion in 2018. The acquisition has made a clear impact in the company’s financial performance, as demonstrated by IBM’s most recent earnings report in January.

The company revealed it had more than 3,800 hybrid cloud clients, an increase from 1,000 the previous year. IBM’s consulting arm landed 700 new Red Hat clients in 2021 and customer sign ups more than doubled.

Building value on cloud

Big Tech is embracing open source because small companies are leveraging those and other technologies to build successful businesses on top of cloud platforms. This is fueling IT transformation and nurturing entirely new industries as additional value is generated.

An example of this can be seen in ChaosSearch Inc., the data analytics startup that experienced a 611% growth in revenues last year and a tripling of its customer base. ChaosSearch transforms cloud storage into an on-demand analytics database, correlating log data to a business intelligence engine.

The ChaosSearch story is one of scale, automation, fine-grained capabilities, and a technology that can innovate on top of cloud data and extract value. In doing so, the company is changing the mission of a data lake and demonstrating the power of a new business built on the cloud — a supercloud.

A supercloud has the ability to operate cross-platform, and ChaosSearch is multimodal and multicloud. Many companies are building businesses that deliver software-as-a-service and automate workflows by leveraging the extensive capabilities that the hyperscalers provide.

Key players in the open-source world are forming superclouds as well. MongoDB, with its Atlas managed database service, has built multiplatform operational capability for customers who want to run in the cloud. HashiCorp Inc., which provides open-source tools for developers, offers a managed cloud service and serves Terraform as an infrastructure-as-code solution for building in the cloud.

“Supercloud, from a buyer’s perspective, is about business transformation, building value on top of hyperscale infrastructure, and building a new type of business in the cloud and across cloud,” said Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE and chief analyst at Wikibon, SiliconANGLE’s research affiliate, in a recently published analysis. “Essentially, it is the future of cloud in our view. If you don’t own a hyperscale cloud, which is almost everyone, then you’d better embrace the technology capital spending gift the hyperscalers are giving to you.”

New tools for cost control

Accompanying the rise of the supercloud has been growth of both the open-source community and cloud native, leading to an expanded landscape for options in cost control. While the hyperscalers provide tools for cloud management, such as Amazon’s CloudWatch and Microsoft’s Azure Cost Management and Billing, a number of startups are carving out a niche in the space as well. Zesty Tech Inc., Kubecost Inc. and Cloudability are just three examples of the myriad new firms seeking to help enterprises control cloud expenses.

There are also cost-containment open-source tools on the horizon. Project Koku is an open-source solution designed to identify and report cost data. The Komiser project has a mission to create an open cloud cost optimization capability with the support of the major public cloud providers.

“The potential for overspending on public cloud services is very real,” said Gartner’s Chandrasekaran. “Without effective governance and financial transparency, organizations can experience over commitment and wasteful spend in cloud costs. Adopting cloud-native principles can lead to software release velocity and better operational efficiencies, but the know-how and skills around it are still quite limited in most enterprises.”

A driving force behind cloud-native growth and open source is money. Enterprise developers call the shots when it comes to software tools. They are big fans of open source, and the investment community loves businesses that attract massive developer interest.

Over the course of 2022, a number of companies founded on open source could go public. These include Databricks Inc., Snyk Ltd. and Grafana Labs Inc., an open observability platform that has reached a $3 billion valuation.

What is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of open-source startup growth is the sheer range of products that are attracting developer adoption. The most recent release of the Ross Index, a compilation of the fastest-growing startups based on GitHub repository developer “star” activity, listed tools for software supply chain auditing, Kubernetes configuration, workflow frameworks, a time series database, and telecommunications support in the top 10.

As developers exhibit their interest, investment from the venture capital community and other sources has followed a similar path.

“The areas where we see most investments by VCs for open-source software include application development, infrastructure software, DevOps, and data and analytics, including artificial intelligence,” Chandrasekaran noted. “Pursuing an open-source commercial model allows start-ups to adopt a ‘product-led growth’ model, where they are able to get the products to users faster and achieve faster scaling of business, which lowers cost of customer acquisition and potentially create a viral effect for product adoption.”

The open-source community has emerged as a significant force in driving enterprise innovation. With a growing startup ecosystem, popularity among developers, and looming IPOs, the open-source world is poised to extend its influence over the coming year.

Meanwhile, maintainers such as cURL’s Stenberg will continue to fine-tune the tools that are running a sizable portion of the global economy. And the open-source maintainer has his own advice for the industry’s future.

“We need to stay focused,” Stenberg said. “Turn down crazy feature-creeping ideas, yet add things that are good and sensible. We need to keep our ears to the ground and listen to users and adapt — we are far from done.”

Image: Kentoh