The Guest: Jim Brandt, CTO at Best Practical Solutions
Jim Brandt is a highly experienced product manager and tech leader. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Best Practical Solutions, a company developing an open-source Request Tracker for Incident Response (RTIR), ticket, and incident-tracking software. Jim shares his insights on the role that open-source software plays in the world today, and its future in software development.
Ins and Outs of Open Source Software Development
Open source software has many advantages, such as being free to use and modify, and allowing for collaboration, transparency and customization. In theory, it makes developers better in handling complex interdependencies and finding a common ground with the wider open source community. However, what happens if the open-source software in question is adopted by a huge corporation with lots of resources and they start pouring in their developers’ time into it? How can we make sure that an open source software is not monopolized?
Some of the topics covered in this episode include:
- The reasons behind the mistrust towards open-source software
- The security risks and secure development approaches to open-source libraries
- The benefits of having open source software developers
- The involvement of major corporations in open source software development
Jim, how should company leaders feel about their engineering teams engaging with open source communities?
“I think it is a broadly positive thing and actually something that they should encourage… The question is, which things are right, because open source is a huge world. You can’t have all your staff just working on open source software… My advice would be to look at the parts of open source that are the most important for your company. What do people in your organization mostly rely on? And then you can make that decision and have somebody watch this community so that you know what’s going on.”
Listen to the Story of Software on:
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Deezer, & any other podcast platform of your choice. The Story of Software Podcast is produced by Zartis. We hope you enjoy listening to this tech podcast and feel free to share any feedback with us: podcast@zartis.com
