According to a new report by Aiven, Google has upped its commitments to open source software and surpassed Microsoft in terms of active contributors. According to Aiven, Google currently has more active contributors than Microsoft thanks to a 20 percent increase in year-over-year monthly commits to the open source code repository GitHub. Google had 5,421 active contributors in July compared to Microsoft’s 5,268 active contributors, according to data from the Open Source Contributor Index (OCSI).
Aiven co-founder and CTO Heikki Nousiainen said Google overtaking Microsoft was “particularly surprising”.
“A factor in this has been a decline in Microsoft’s year-on-year commits to open source projects,” Nousiainen said. “However, Microsoft commitment to developer freedom and innovation is consistent, with the company being a major player in open source, and even purchasing GitHub in 2018.”
According to a new report by Aiven, Google has upped its commitments to open source software and surpassed Microsoft in terms of active contributors. According to Aiven, Google currently has more active contributors than Microsoft thanks to a 20 percent increase in year-over-year monthly commits to the open source code repository GitHub. Google had 5,421 active contributors in July compared to Microsoft’s 5,268 active contributors, according to data from the Open Source Contributor Index (OCSI).
Aiven pointed out that Amazon has started to put more of an emphasis on open-source initiatives, as evidenced by its support for OpenSearch, an ElasticSearch fork, and an increase in the number of projects on GitHub. Nousiainen argued that Amazon’s support for OpenSearch and ElasticSearch represented a “significant change of direction for the firm” and a desire to take the helm of significant open source projects. According to Aiven, these tech giants are quickly expanding their use of open source software. According to the data, there are now 300 percent more active GitHub contributors from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google than there were six years ago.
“The overall message of the research is positive,” Nousiainen said. “There’s a huge amount of innovation continuing to happen in the open-source community and the results benefit us all. The hyperscalers are setting an example for others to follow.”
