GitHub Declares Every Friday Open Source Day And Wants You to Take Part

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GitHub is home to many open-source development projects, a lot of which are featured on XDA. The service wants more people to contribute to open-source projects with a new initiative called Open Source Friday. In a nutshell, GitHub will be encouraging companies to allow their employees to work on open-source projects at the end of each working week.

Even if all of the products you use on a daily basis are based on closed source software, much of the technology world operates using software based on open source software. A lot of servers are based off of various GNU/Linux based operating systems such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Much of the world’s infrastructure depends on open source software.

By allowing employees to work on open source projects, companies may help improve essential business infrastructure – making things better for everybody. Mike McQuaid, a senior software engineer at GitHub, explains why allowing developers to work on open-source projects is a win-win situation for both a business and its employees:

“We see this as kind of a mutually beneficial arrangement, both for businesses and their employees, be they aspiring contributors, active contributors, or current maintainers. Because if [businesses] provide those people with time to work on these things during their work hours, that’s beneficial to the company, and that’s beneficial to the individuals as well.”

Open Source Friday isn’t limited to just individuals. An entire team, department, or company can take part, too. Contributing to open source software isn’t just altruistic – it’s an investment in the tools your company may rely on.

GitHub is ready to help out developers new to open source software. The company released its Open Source Guides last year. In the beginning, GitHub encouraged developers to work on open-source programs every fourth Friday of the month. Now they hope to see developers spend two hours every Friday working on an open source project relevant to the business.

Developers can sign up for the Open Source Friday initiative on its dedicated website.