Connectome, Microsoft, Ethereum and Ocean Protocol Discuss The Coming Age of Open Source Technology

This article is written by Singaram.

Solutions based on technologies such as AI, blockchain, and AR are increasingly based around open source platforms. The same applies to Connectome’s virtual human agent (VHA) technology. Representatives from Connectome, Microsoft, Ethereum, and Ocean Protocol convened to discuss what open source means for their companies and organizations.

How important is collaboration in the form of open source to the success of tech companies? What will it mean for the future of technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, AR/VR and IoT? How do open source companies profit? How can developers and investors contribute to and reap benefits from open source?

Those were some of the burning questions that a panel of industry heavyweights gathered to tackle at the Connectome Pte Ltd’s Next-Gen Ecosystems: The Coming of Age for Open Source panel discussion.

The list of speakers included industry insiders and open source experts such as Sindhu Chengad, Open Source Strategy Lead of Microsoft, Kazuaki Ishiguro, Chief Blockchain Architect at Couger Inc. and Connectome Pte. Ltd. & Regional Head of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, Aravind Putrevu, Developer Advocate at Elastic, and Kiran Karkera, Data Scientist at DEX, which co-founded Ocean Protocol Foundation, a non-profit decentralized data sharing technology platform.

The Future of Human-like AI

The event kicked off with an exciting networking session where Mr Ishiguro stole the show by presenting Connectome’s Virtual Human Agent, Rachel. Oozing aesthetic appeal, Rachel exchanged pleasantries and conversed with visitors fluently with astonishingly low latency — a feature that anyone who has worked with speech recognition and text-to-speech services would much appreciate. What was even more special was that Rachel displayed emotions, ranging from happiness and excitement to apathy and boredom.

Connectome will soon be open-sourcing Rachel and perhaps her counterparts around August this year to specific SDK partners, who can then develop and customize them further according to their own requirements. These partners can then trade, buy or sell VHA on Connectome’s blockchain-based virtual marketplace, thereby profiting via highly secure transactions.

Big Tech Buying Open Source

Commencing the panelists’ speeches, Ms Chengad shared how the previous year had seen large technology companies make major acquisitions of open source platforms. The biggest moves were Microsoft acquiring Github and IBM acquiring Red Hat. Both view the acquisitions as a way of tapping into resources that have huge growth potential and can expand their existing portfolio of services and products.

Referring to Microsoft’s increased focus on open source since new CEO Satya Nadella took over, she said that tech giants are also increasingly prepared to collaborate with one another

She also highlighted big trends like open sourcing database, 1st party services development and container support for tech giants.

Finding Funding for Open Source

Next, Mr Ishiguro shared about overcoming challenges in open source funding. As per Linus’ Law — “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”, he said open source leads to quick fixes of bugs and greater simplicity, security, auditability at a lower cost.

He also highlighted challenges in obtaining funding because of the reluctance of developers to switch to business-oriented roles and that Github does not allow or provide dynamic sponsorship. Several impactful open source projects obtain maximal funding through licenses per usage, whereas others like Wikimedia survive on donations and cost offsets from tech giants. Ethical advertising on developer websites is also a funding source.

One major hurdle is that open source is deficient in maintainers though there are several users and contributors. 93% of npm packages have only one maintainer. To solve such issues with developer burnout and incompetent/unincentivized leadership, blockchain curation markets and platforms like Gitcoin and oscoin have arisen, he said.

The Open Source Business Case

The third and final speaker, Mr Putrevu of Elastic, gave a business perspective on open source. Built on an open source foundation, Elastic has a paid subscription for users for its easy-to-use hosted and managed Elasticsearch engine.

Due to having insufficient maintainers for open source, he said that companies must hire paid developers but find resources strained. He emphasized the need for users to manage their expectations and contribute to developing the project. Furthermore, open source companies must contribute valuable upstream codes to avoid being simply offset.

Spreading Open Source

Following the presentations, the event’s panel discussion started. Mr Kiran Karkera, a data scientist at DEX who was among the top 1% of data scientists at Kaggle.com as of Dec 2013, joined to panel.

Among the questions asked was how traditional businesses like shipping and F&B can use open source software. Ms Chengad said that open source allows edge computing, seamless data exchange, and better predictive maintenance. Oil spill incidents, for instance, can thus be better managed.

Speakers were also queried on the security of open source. Mr Putrevu, previously at McAfee Antivirus, noted the prevalent use of open source in antivirus programs. Mr Karkera added that open source’s security is enhanced by economic incentives from blockchain-based tokens that reward good contributors.

Other interesting nuggets were that Indian state governments like Kerala’s are keen on open source to have updated software for insurance and Aadhaar cards.

Finally, attendees gave feedback and noted how the panelists had presented several abstract concepts in a clear and engaging way.

Fostering many meaningful connections, this event marked the successful inception of future collaborations in the open source industry.