Open Source is Booming!

Open Source innovation engines drive the technology economy, and they are expanding rapidly as every industry becomes a vertical software industry. The global expansion of The Linux and Eclipse foundations and many other open source institutions in automotive, energy, health, transportation, media, IoT, and so on, is a reflection of this new expanding reality—one where Open Source is far more than just free, shareable code, but underpins our expanding computational economy. 

 

But Wait: Open Source in Cities is Not Booming!

Despite these successes, sustainable and widely used Open Source has limited uptake in municipal markets. There are ~18,000 municipalities in the U.S. alone. Each usually its own silo, with its own procurement processes. Each is struggling to keep up technologically, and failing. Ransomware attacks are becoming frequent, trust is plummeting, privacy is collapsing, transparency is lacking, security is failing, bias is pervasive, and diversity is missing.

 

Where is the municipal Open Source innovation engine/s?  Where is Open Source in cities at scale? Maybe we have to build them.  

 

Baltimore: A Hub of Open Source MidAtlantic

 

• Portland declared itself an epicenter of Open Source, put in the work, and it helped.

• Raleigh declared its commitment to Open Source, painted a vision, nourished an engaged citizenry as an Open Source City, acted on it, and it helped.  

• Baltimore as an Open Source epicenter for the MidAtlantic region can help. Help Baltimore, the MidAtlantic, and hopefully help accelerate global Municipal Innovation Engines toward more sustainability.

 

Open Source epicenters start with partnerships and structured collaboration; partnerships with the broader Open Source community and existing Open Source institutions. Open Source will only work at scale with structured cooperation and economically incentivized de-siloing of cites.   

​

This means engaging the full community, including the enterprises and industry in a city/region that drive the local economic engines.   When we look to establish an Open Source epicenter, InnerSource becomes the needed bridge for industry involvement and participation. Innersouce is the application of Open Source methodologies behind the corporate firewall.  InnerSource has successfully been adopted by leaders of industry from many verticals.  It provides tremendous gains in developer productivity, developer work satisfaction, and reduction in management overhead. 

 

In a continuing effort to establish sustainable partnerships with the Open Source Community at large, the Baltimore community this September is welcoming its partnership with The InnerSource Commons (ISC) Community for its Fall Summit.

 

The ISC has successfully brought Open Source methodologies to enterprise internal development. ISC provides resources to and mentors a growing, diverse following of software practitioners with the goal of creating and sharing knowledge about InnerSource and its benefits for enterprises. Founded in 2015, the ISC is now supporting and connecting more than 70 companies, academic institutions, and government agencies. Participants in the ISC include executives from large enterprises, as well as those from companies such as GitHub, Slack, Microsoft, and others at the forefront of enabling productive, collaborative development. 

 

If you recognize that your enterprise needs to establish a better way to collaborate internally, and/or you see the strategic importance of Open Source to your city, join us at the ISC Summit September 17-19 in Baltimore, Maryland. At the Summit, you will learn about InnerSource from speakers such as former PayPal and Wikimedia executive Danese Cooper, who spearheaded the InnerSource movement.