Once upon a time, packaged software was all we knew. That was the late 60’s and early 70’s when the concept of Open Source hadn’t yet been birthed. The norm for programmers was to be hired to write code for corporations or sell code to companies or consumers.
To be sure, open source software itself already existed but the term had not yet been coined. Computers and software were a new thing and enthusiasts would meet up and write code for fun, a scenario not unlike that of the recent gatherings and meetups of blockchain technology enthusiasts.
Meanwhile, development of software based on the sharing and collaborative improvement of software source code gained more popularity over time (in large part as a protest against proprietary software giants like Microsoft) and in the late 1990s, gained mainstream recognition that led to the coining of the ‘Open Source’ label.
Basically, the term Open Source denotes that a product includes permission to use its source code, design documents or content. This means any developer or programmer can contribute to the development of an open source project, which is an amazing way of involving global talents and communities to collaborate and produce high quality programs.
Engaging global talents and communities
Last month when smart advertising token SaTT announced its decision to get on the open source route, it was precisely to take advantage of this aspect of Open Source. According to SaTT:
It has always been clear to us that a blockchain project, decentralized by definition, cannot be constrained by a centralized environment … [SaTT aims to be] a project that can benefit from community contributions and exceed our vision and know-how, establishing ourselves as a universal reference.
Open Source does offer advantages when compared to Proprietary Development, such as – the backing and involvement of global talents and communities as mentioned; enhanced levels of creative freedom for developers and platform customization to the end user; open source projects with vibrant communities increase their chances of finding and fixing bugs, amongst the reasons to choose open source development.
In good company
Indeed, SaTT is in good company taking the Open Source route. Some of the best known and most successful blockchain projects are open source.
Ethereum immediately springs to mind of course, as the open source blockchain platform on which smart contracts run. Proposed in 2013 by Vitalik Buterin who has since become one of the most influential voices in Blockchain, the distributed public blockchain network enables developers to build and deploy next-generation decentralised apps easily.
Currently, the Ethereum platform is depending on open source development for a widely anticipated major upgrade to Ethereum 2.0. The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is one of the largest open-source blockchain initiatives representing a wide variety of business sectors which includes technology, healthcare, banking, energy, government, pharmaceuticals and many more.
Hyperledger Fabric, the enterprise-grade permissioned distributed ledger framework that enables performance at scale while preserving privacy; Solidity, the contract-oriented programming language; MetaMask, one of the most downloaded blockchain browser extensions which equips you with all you need to manage digital assets are just a handful of the numerous open source blockchain projects that have made their mark on the industry.
Outside of blockchain the open source success stories are considered mainstream technology successes.
Linux has come a long way since Linus Torvalds announced the creation of an OS kernel back in 1991, with a majority of web servers currently running on its platform. Used by numerous websites and services, amongst them Wikipedia and Facebook, MySQL is the most widely used database server in the world. Utilized by 46% of all websites in the world, Apache HTTP Server has been the most popular web server software since 1996. WordPress is one of the most dominant and popular blog platforms. Google Chrome has overtaken the global desktop browser market share for 2020 with 77.3%.
Indeed, history has indicated that open source developments have been successful in claiming substantial market share.
Can the SaTT project live up to its goal of being the working advertising solution that will be widely adopted by its industry?
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With a utility token that enables advertisers to buy smart advertising services on its dApp platform, SaTT helps to quantify ROI using blockchain oracles that retrieve data from media platforms like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others. When the actions performed by influencers and content creators successfully meet the criteria set by the advertiser, payments are triggered automatically from the advertiser’s preloaded budget to the wallet of the influencer/publisher.
Offering up a fast, secure, tamper-proof, and cost-efficient solution, the SaTT smart advertising system shows much promise, not to mention that it is already a working solution, now in the midst of implementing a massively large scale POC. With a roadmap that details how it will reach Open Source mode in six to nine months’ time, SaTT seems to be taking a step in the right direction.
