Twitter's strategy: As much open source as possible

On Tuesday, Twitter acknowledged what much of the Web 2.0 world has discovered but doesn't discuss nearly enough: it is a huge open-source beneficiary. However, Twitter isn't content to simply use the fruits of others' work. Twitter is also a significant open-source contributor:

When we plan new engineering projects at Twitter, we measure our requirements against the capabilities of open source offerings, and prefer to use open source whenever it makes sense. By this approach, much of Twitter is now built on open-source software.

In some cases, our requirements--in particular, the scalability requirements of our service--lead us to develop projects from the ground up. We develop these projects with an eye toward open source, and are pleased to contribute our projects back to the open-source community when there is a clear benefit.

Interesting, and probably a very good strategy for any company looking to shave costs and boost productivity, as well as ensure that open source remains a renewable resource. Twitter is setting a very positive standard for corporate adoption of and contributions to open source.

Now I just need to get them speaking at the Open Source Business Conference.

[WeCanDoBIZ]

This is very interesting. Not only is it, I agree, a good exmaple of corporate use of Open Source software, but I mused a couple of weeks back on whether Twitter's way forward was to Open Source the "transport" and then make money from applications build on top which explot the platform.

I wonder if they are thinking the same thing...?

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
http://twitter.com/wecandobiz