Technology moves quickly and so do the people who create and use it. Here are some predictions for open source tech in 2022 from the Opensource.com community.
Developers at the forefront
Who has not noticed recently in their own networks how many developers are taking on new challenges, new roles, and moving on to new organizations? When looking at the coming year, I think it's not so much about the technology trends but about the developers being the real emerging trend for 2022. They are going to have much more say, as I pointed out in my keynote at OpenSlava 2017. Due to the changes in culture around the globe, developers now have the ability to work anywhere, for any organization, and almost without restrictions. Now your talent pool is not just local, you must expand and hunt the bigger fish globally, and it will come at a higher cost as that demand spikes. It's apparent to me that organizations need to pay more attention to resources than emerging technology trends in 2022. If they fail to figure out how to manage resources by obtaining and retaining quality developer talent, organizations are going to be navigating very rough seas. Salaries will increase for developers, and opportunities will be for the choosing, all the more showcasing how developers are the real emerging technology worth watching. —Eric D. Schabell
Accessibility and inclusion
As the world becomes smaller by being more connected and with the shift to remote work, open source will become more inclusive. Often afterthoughts, accessibility and inclusion will be a part of researching, designing, and developing our products. Disabilities that are often unseen through the anonymity of the internet, hearing loss or audio processing issues, neurodiversity, and different ways folks have for processing information are more visible now that many of us get connected through remote work and collaboration. Communication is essential, and with about 15% of people worldwide self-identifying as living with a disability, inclusion in open source is critical. —AmyJune Hineline
Open source in DevOps
In 2022, we’re going to see the first signs of an inflection point between the open source DevOps tools communities and commercial DevOps tools vendors. Private equity firms seeking to create the next commercial DevOps platform with a high valuation will be the root cause. Open source DevOps tools will never disappear. In fact, some of the tools may seed acquisitions as smaller DevOps tool startups behind open source projects get snapped. All of this raises the potential for new cultural conflict in the DevOps tools community at some point. —Will Kelly
Open source growth
I expect the use of open source software to grow steadily. Open source software is integral to growth markets like cloud computing, Industry 4.0, and blockchain-based applications. Especially Linux-based operating systems are steadily gaining market shares from previously proprietary applications. —Stephan Avenwedde
Cloud metrics
I believe that the importance of metrics will be more relevant from the perspective of enterprise now that cloud adoption is maturing. The thinking around the following requires metrics so that they can measure their progress.
- How to understand where they are in their adoption to establish a baseline
- How to understand how they are doing on their cloud journey to show progress and help them uncover issues they need to improve
- To understand what to do next so that they can decide what to experiment/test in the future —Michael Calizo
[ More on cloud predictions: 5 Kubernetes trends to watch in 2022 ]
Broader support of open source
I see important development in two areas:
Corporate support: Long ago, open source stopped being something that we did in our spare time because it was cool. Open source is now a driving force across all industries, and that’s a game-changer. But open source cannot be “free to take”—organizations need to give back in some way, perhaps by hiring open source developers or allowing their own development team to contribute to a project, providing financial support, offering testing and documentation support, sponsoring internships, or finding other ways to support an open source project. Without that support, open source developers may stop working on the project, or the project may take an unexpected turn. Organizations can minimize the impact by finding ways to invest in the open source projects they use.
Supply chain management: We’re seeing the importance of treating open source as part of an overall supply chain. Organizations cannot assume an open source project will be free of bugs. Every software has bugs. So organizations that leverage or otherwise rely on open source to run part of (or all of) their business need to get serious about managing the supply chain. How will you “vet” or test new releases to ensure they behave as expected? Don’t just dump a new open source release into production and assume everything will be fine. —Jim Hall
Share with us in the comments: What are your open source tech predictions for 2022?
Comments are closed.