GitHub talks about the importance of open source (Open Source)

Open source projects are heavily influenced within the software development community, but this is even more important within the GitHub🇧🇷 The company values ​​projects that can be used by many people and for good causes through various incentive programs and partnerships with many technology companies.

To talk more about it, the showmetech had the opportunity to talk to Stormy peters, Vice President of Communities GitHub, about how project augmentation work Open Source been done and what to expect in the future. See it right now!

GitHub keeps growing

In addition to being used to disseminate news for software development professionals, the GitHub Universe 2022 was the stage for the dissemination of the study octoverse, which annually counts data from the project creation platform.

This analysis has been done since 2012, and the company disclosed that 3,5 billion contributions were made in the GitHub throughout 2021. The company also noted that 90% of companies that use the GitHub appear in Fortune 100 (list of Forbes with the world's largest companies) and 85 million data repositories were created in 2021. Stormy peters points out that the main purpose of the company is to invest in innovations so that professionals can get their ideas off the ground.

My team is working to create solutions for companies to invest in open source solutions and all the tools for developers to use GitHub to be successful. In addition to all the work to give the current structure, we also focus a part of our work on innovating the use of open source, which helps generate money and value for companies to use open source for individual demands.

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities

According to another spokesperson for the company, the GitHub has 94 million developers using its platform every day and the 100 million number is expected to be reached soon. The lack of people to take care of projects is still smaller than the available demand, so the more people register on the platform, the greater the chances of having a more connected world.

How have open source projects been?

Stormy recalls that currently, open source projects are essential for the world due to the high adherence of professionals from all over the world and mainly, the way in which everything can be improved over time.

Himself GitHub has several programs to encourage the creation of actions open source and even news such as the Copilot are first released to administrators of large open source projects and secondly to companies and other types of users.

Open source projects are fundamental to the world. For companies, this is more than essential and we see it on a daily basis, as 90% of companies that are on GitHub use it in their demands. I think this number is even higher and we don't know. These days, these solutions manage to avoid years and years of development, as the hard work has already been done and companies just need to adapt the ideas.

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities.

the great work of Stormy peters as vice president of Communities do GitHub it is always working so that professionals have more and more resources and still manage to get everything off paper without much effort. Only in Brazil there are 3 million registered users; within the period of one year, 974 thousand people registered for the first time.

Our goal is to make developers' lives easier, happier, more profitable and more sustainable. So we do that through various releases like Copilot, Hey GitHub and more. Speaking specifically about my team, we are working on the day-to-day of developers and how to make their projects successful. We have programs like GitHub Sponsors, which help software development professionals get paid, and other programs announced at GitHub Universe 2022, like GitHub Accelerator and other investment funds for open source ideas.

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities.

Residents from 68 countries can submit their project to the GitHub Sponsors and it is enough to have an account on the platform for your submission to be carried out.

support for beginners

Brazilians are passionate about technology professions and since they do not have access to content, many software developers end up looking for knowledge on the internet. access to GitHub it's free and Stormy peters points out that the platform has many training programs that interested parties can go further.

We have a great team of partners in great schools that teach GitHub from the first days of the course. It is an important process and we know it exists, although we do not have visibility on what has been done. Brazil is one of the countries that grew the most in our education programs and we are happy with this result, as well as we will work to keep it at this level.

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities.

Peters he also pointed out that the company has been working to increase access to information, and several tools are being launched so that more and more people have access to knowledge. O GitHub Education launched templates for the GitHub CodeSpaces, a way to allow access to education to be done widely. CodeSpaces is free for students and teachers and the Student Developer Pack of GitHub provides benefit packages for students.

Community use of GitHub Copilot

First released to the world in June 2022, the GitHub Copilot is a tool that arrives to change the scenario of software development.

By December 2022, the new feature will finally be released to companies, as until then, only managers of large open source projects, freelance professionals, teachers and students had access. Stormy recalls that the tool uses data from specialists as a basis through text training with natural language and publicly available source codes.

An interesting novelty integrated recently is the Hey GitHub, that allows people to put keyboards aside to create their applications. It's an interesting feature that delivers mobility and speed on a daily basis. We've talked more about this in our special article, be sure to check it out.

GitHub Copilot has natural language text and publicly available source code, but it is not “trained” from the ground up. It is a tool that improves over time and will get even better in the coming months.

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities.

O GitHub Copilot can be widely used by various parts of society and Stormy remember that the first release is just the first step towards a big change. How professionals will use the personal assistant in their day to day will be more important to measure how everything will change in society.

I believe that Copilot should work in the same way that the calculator and the computer changed society. The easiest explanation is the calculator one: you had to calculate things manually, but at some point, that won't be practical to solve a certain problem because you'll need to use a big formula to do the project. The calculators were useful because it was no longer necessary to do the math by hand, as the result appears on the screen in a maximum of one second.

The same thing goes for Copilot: I can go online, look up all the code variables and names, as well as test everything, but Copilot does it for you. It's like a calculator or a spell checker: you can learn to say a certain thing on the internet, but the spell checker will do it automatically. 

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities.

The growth of the number of professionals in Brazil

As the third largest developer community open source outside the US, in just one year, 974 people opened their GitHub account for the first time. Stormy says that the growth has happened in recent years, but the biggest boost is the willpower of Brazilians.

We noticed that in recent years, registrations are growing exponentially and I believe that people are very educated, passionate and very open to innovation. There is a lot of innovation and people put it everywhere by solving everyday problems with a lot of creativity.

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities.

O GitHub It also really wants to invest in Brazilian projects so that this community grows more and more, since the new incentive programs for those who work with open source also include those who live in Tupiniquin lands.

What does the future hold for the developer community?

At the end of our interview, Stormy recalls that he hopes that the launch of all the novelties of the GitHub Universe 2022 be useful for as many developers as possible and that there is a lot to be done, as well as everything was thought exactly to generate more productivity.

I would like to change everyone. The new functionalities, Copilot, investment programs and other tools will be essential for everything to be done in the best possible way.

Stormy peters, Vice President of GitHub Communities.

She also recalls that funding programs such as GitHub Sponsors help several countries like Brazil to have their projects encouraged and the universe of open source continue to grow exponentially.

How do you think incentive programs can help open source applications? Tell us us Comment!

See also other features

Check out all the news presented during GitHub Universe 2022