How and why we're opening our code at Octopus Deploy

Are you thinking about open sourcing your codebase? Octopus Deploy started as a closed source project, but the company is making an effort to open source more of its code. Damian Brady explains why Octopus Deploy choose to open source software that is core to its business, how it chose what parts to open source, and how the company ensured it won't lose intellectual property and market advantage.

Octopus Deploy may have started as a closed source project, but the company now has more than 50 public repositories in GitHub, many of which contain core product functionality. This has raised some eyebrows, but companies as large as Microsoft have been making similar steps, opening what used to be proprietary. Opening up a closed codebase can bring significant benefits, but there are legitimate fears around losing intellectual property, exposing security flaws, or even just showing the world that your code isn’t perfect. Damian Brady shares how and why Octopus Deploy decided to go down this path and offers lessons that can be applied to any company considering the same journey. Damian explores Octopus Deploy’s decision to start opening its code, how the company decided what needed to keep private and how it makes that decision on an ongoing basis as the product grows, and the practical complexities around development, including how Octopus Deploy works with both public and private repositories and how it isolates the codebases. Damien concludes by highlighting the benefits Octopus Deploy has seen as the community has started participating and the challenges with keeping everyone happy.