Free Software

Yes, some software is free. It’s called Open Source.

The source code was built by practitioners, maintained by a community, and is freely available.

Some household names are open-source projects: Mozilla Firefox, WordPress, VLC Media Player.

Also, some very popular data tools: PostgreSQL, Spark, Airflow, and Kafka.

If ‘free’ sounds like a great price, you might thinking “Sawyer, tell me how to get some free software!”

Free is great, but it comes with a ton of work. And while the software is free, the computers required to run it aren’t free. And the expertise required to maintain it isn’t free.

It’s like a “free puppies” sign next to the road.

Yes, the puppy was free, but between vet bills, supplies, and food it’s far from free. It also demands a ton of your time and restricts what and when you can do certain things.

Most people opt to pay for a managed version of open source projects: Databricks, Confluent, WordPress.com (instead of .org).

Open Source software plays a huge role in the data world. Hit reply if your team is using an Open Source project or considering using one.

I’m here,

Sawyer

p.s. Next week, June 20th, I’m presenting on the Open Source project Spark at the PASSMN SQL Server User Group. It’s a virtual user group so you can attend from anywhere. Here’s the info so you can attend.