The use of open source technologies is no longer confined to the software development world. As evidenced by several insightful videos, open source principles and practices are being embraced by diverse industries for driving innovation and transformation.

One area where open source is gaining traction is within large enterprises through the innersourcing model. The video “How InnerSource can accelerate culture change” highlights how innersourcing brings the collaborative mindset and transparency of open source development inside a company. By treating internal software projects as open source with open contribution and code sharing, innersourcing breaks down organizational silos and fosters a more empowered engineering culture. Companies like PayPal have used innersourcing to scale best practices and accelerate delivery of high-quality products and services.

The importance of having a dedicated open source program office is explored in the video “Why should you have an Open Source Program Office?” As more companies participate in and rely on open source projects, an open source program office provides guidance on open source strategy, policies, and compliance. It helps companies be good open source citizens by facilitating contributions back to the community and developing processes for secure open source consumption and distribution.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating examples comes from the film industry in the video “Transformation of an Industry: Open Source in Film”. The visual effects and animation industry has embraced open source technologies and development models for pursuits like color management, geometry processing, and asset management. Open source has enabled smaller studios to access cutting-edge tools and allowed the industry to collaborate on building core software components rather than reinventing the wheel at each studio.

Across these examples runs a common thread - open source provides a vehicle for industry transformation and a new model for collaboration both within and across organizations. Rather than closely guarding intellectual property, open sourcing enables shared investment and faster development through community-driven innovation. It fosters transparency, meritocracy, and cross-pollination of ideas.

Updates on Pandas

On a personal note, getting involved with the pandas open source project has provided a fascinating window into open source contribution in action. So far, I’ve contributed a couple of documentation issues, some CI/CD work, and helped with issue triage - it’s been an insightful and rewarding experience. Currently, I’m collaborating with a group on a larger code issue involving the testing infrastructure. Beyond that, I’m constantly exploring other potential documentation and code contributions that could improve this library.