Recently an Aiven study was released on GitHub, the repository hosting service, in which reveals that the total number of active contributors in relation to open source, from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google on GitHub grew 300% in six years, from 2654 contributors in May 2016 to 10 in May 549.
Research suggests that Google has overtaken Microsoft in the number of active contributors GitHub for the first time in about three years, with 4643 contributors to Microsoft's 4394, and Google is expected to overtake Microsoft in the number of monthly commits for the first time.
Research is based on data from the Open Source Contributor Index and it shows that Google is stepping up its efforts, with active contributors on GitHub (4643) surpassing contributions from Microsoft (4394) for the first time since recordings began in 2016.
More than a third of Microsoft's OSS contributions are in Microsoft-maintained programming languages. 38,8% of the languages it uses are PowerShell or C#, both originally developed by Microsoft. Google, on the other hand, prefers C++ and Java, and Amazon contributes Python and Java.
Heikki Nousiainen, CTO and co-founder of Aiven, says:
“Our research shows that hyperscalers devote more resources to open source. That is excellent news. As a community, open source software needs that kind of commitment from big tech companies to ensure important projects are kept and vulnerabilities like Log4Shell don't happen again. Furthermore, it is a better way to write clean, transparent and secure code.
An unexpected result of our research was to see Google overtake Microsoft in terms of the number of employees contributing to open source software. Google has been a champion of open source since its inception and recently announced its Assured Open Source Software service, reaffirming its commitment.
The fact that Google overtakes Microsoft is particularly surprising, as one of the factors behind this excess was the year-over-year decline in Microsoft's commitments to open source projects. However, Microsoft's commitment to developer freedom and innovation continues, and the company is a major asset in open source, even buying GitHub in 2018.
This change is a testament to the fact that the market is increasingly looking to capitalize on open source software.
However, Aiven's research on confirmations (new software patch submissions for open source projects) reveals that the number of commits on GitHub from Microsoft and Google is still below of the highs reached in the summer of 2020, although the difference between the two has been reduced
Although Amazon still lags behind its hyperscale competitors, it now supports large open source projects like OpenSearch, a fork of ElasticSearch, and also hosts a growing number of projects on its GitHub page.
Aiven said these technology companies are getting more and more involved in open source software. Data shows that the total number of active contributors to GitHub from Amazon, Microsoft and Google has increased by 300% in six years.
"The overall message from the research is positive," Nousiainen said. “There is a lot of innovation that continues to happen in the open source community and the results benefit us all. Hyperscalers are setting an example for others to follow.”
On the other hand, it is mentioned that Amazon's support for OpenSearch and ElasticSearch represented a "significant change of direction for the company" and a desire to take command of major open source projects. According to Aiven, these tech giants are rapidly expanding their use of open source software. According to data, there are now 300% more active GitHub contributors from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google than there were six years ago.
In other words, these three are getting their hands on GNU/Linux, the same ones who said it was communist stuff.
They have more danger from friends than from enemies.