Open Source communities make it all worthwhile

We’ve recently seen a number of posts on Open Source Systems (OSS) from colleagues around Amadeus, and today I’d like to talk about the benefits of OSS from a developer’s point of view. I work in the innovation team in Nice (France), and am fortunate to work closely with many talented Amadeus developers.

One of the main benefits I’d like to highlight is the community around OSS – found on places like Ohloh or Github. These communities take the spirit of OSS and work in a very team-friendly way. For instance, if one developer posts some code he has been working on, other community members will comment on it, spot bugs, and even post suggestions for fixes of bugs!

For a developer, this represents a big time saving when working on new code. Another aspect of OSS that helps us save time, is that we don’t have to start from scratch   every time we start a new project. The basic building blocks of a program can be re-used or taken from another company or developer – I can’t tell you how much this helps developers focus on the new aspects that have to be created, and save time on the project.

Another aspect OSS brings developers is the opportunity to ”sign”  their work, much like how I’m signing this post today. This allows them to have a name in the aforementioned community and brings recognition to their work.

Finally, for a developer, working with OSS is like a Christmas present: shiny, new and exciting! The chance to work on cutting edge programming is always exciting, challenging, and ultimately rewarding.

With new processes and systems come new issues and problems – but fortunately with OSS the solutions come faster than with legacy systems. We’re embracing OSS and the opportunities it provides to continuously improve Amadeus solutions, and hope that the work we do with OSS will also benefit others, giving back as much as we are getting from the OSS community.