It’s not a secret that the best and most competitive technologies today exist in the world are based on some Open Source component, maybe the Linux kernel, GNU/Linux operating system, a version of BSD, modules, drivers, or the programming language is completely free or have a free compiler or interpreter.
On the other hand, we have a complex and extensive range of solutions that are born almost with every blink, we need options to integrate these solutions into existing technologies, we have to interconnect new software with hardware and almost all possible combinations can generate with these, so basically, no matter what kind of hardware or software want or have to work, if we want to survive in the era of cloud solutions, build an interface to interconnect them will always be the fastest solution, we will always have to be interconnected and this is a main principle that in cloud architectures is required to satisfy, where the hardware is defined by software and everything is “as a Service” (XaaS), everything has to be able to be interconnected with something else, in short, this is the Application Programming Interfaces (API) age.
Nowadays technologies are needed with API (REST, SOAP), communities (Reddit, IRC, …) accessible information (Blogs, Wikis), otherwise we have to be able to build there, the faster way possible, we need tools, and languages, plugins, everything that we can use to build these interconnections and better solutions, the only platform we can use to accomplish this with the speed needed is the Open Source, it’s not a mystery that Open Source technologies based move much faster than any other kind of proprietary technologies, so if we don’t want to be a technological dinosaur from one day to another we have to know about agile development languages (python, ruby, groovy, …), collaborative work applications (gitlab, github, trac, bugzilla, …), source code management and revision control (git, svn, …), tools that move and help us with the speed required to build new products, today knowing about Open Source, licenses, programming languages, communities is no longer an option.
Speed is not the only thing that Open Source gives, for any professional, having software freedom without limits, whether that solves the problem 100% or having a piece of software that delivers a solid foundation in order to modify and make what is required, POCs without asking for a copy of the software to a company is priceless, which also has an impact on the number of users downloading the same software, which can modify, test, add new characteristics.
I don’t want to expose a vision where nothing else exists besides the Open Source Software but to compete technologically we have to know the ecosystem or even better to innovate must know the tools and work with the right people for the job, people who can integrate all kinds of solutions, but who are this guys? These guys are like super-sysadmins + developers + Open Source gurus, all this and more, equals DevOps engineers (like me), better check this post by the puppetlabs people maybe in the future I’ll write my own.
But you don’t need to believe me, I can challenge you to find a job offer in a company that wants to innovate (any real IT company), regardless of the language or the country you are not looking for DevOps guys or Open Source knowledge.
Let’s cut to the chase, any company that wants to innovate technologically needs DevOps in its payroll, and any DevOps who wants to have a decent job requires Open Source knowledge.
