Why OpenMined is Becoming a Role Model for Open-Source Projects
This is not the first time I write about OpenMined, an open-sourced project on encrypted and decentralised artificial intelligence. Before I start writing about my deep-dive into their GitHub repository, I would like to dedicate this article to their evolution, not only of their software development, but also of their community. I have first learnt about OpenMined during an event in July 2017 in Toronto. It’s been less than 3 months and their growth amazed me to an extent that I truly think future projects could benefit from just observing their steps, not only what they’re developing, but also what it means to be part of the OpenMined project.
WHAT is OpenMined?
I’ve written about them in a previous post. In short, it is an open-sourced project that aims to build software to promote decentralisation of data ownership, as well as machine learning and deep learning libraries that can be used or built-upon without the need of being an expert in either of the fields. In order to achieve their goal, the project is based on three pillars:
- Decentralisation: via Blockchain technology.
- Ownership (Privacy): via Homomorphic Encryption.
- Intelligence: via Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
WHO is OpenMined?
A diverse, distributed, open-sourced community of over 1,259 members in Slack and 58 contributors across their 19 repositories on GitHub. Contributors are not working only on the software, but also design, communications and so on. Everyone helps in those areas where they are most interested in and wherever they can.
WHY should you join OpenMined?
For practical reasons: I think their work involves extremely relevant fields, combinations of which make the project extremely innovative. I know there’s some confusion and the tendency to avoid buzzwords, but working with blockchains, encryption or artificial intelligence is currently a highly recommended career choice. It happened to be one of the most trendy projects on GitHub and Python too. For the developers out there, contributing to open-sourced projects is the best way to show off your skills or to learn something new, while, most importantly, having fun!
Also for reasons that go beyond: Besides the community growing at an insanely fast rate, I personally feel that OpenMined’s community is somewhat much warmer than any other ones I’m part of. Maybe it’s Trask’s love for emojis (and really fun emojis!), maybe it’s the fact that every closed pull request is celebrated, maybe that every new member on Slack is warmly welcomed, maybe due to members being really responsive. Who knows? Maybe all of the above!
But most importantly, OpenMined needs you! o(>ω<)o
