Netflix updates its open source policies

Video-streamer and entertainment production house, Netflix has restructured its open source policies. One remarkable change is a decision to release code prepackaged in Docker’s container formats.

Netflix has open sourced a lot of its production code, but now says those efforts were puzzling some because it was getting harder to figure out which projects were useful for a particular company or a team. “The external community was also uncertain about which components Netflix continued to put in and support, and which were in maintenance or sunset mode,” developers reported.

A revival of the company’s GitHub outpost is among its other developerfriendly efforts, which include a pledge to do the four following things from now on: It will provide full transparency on which projects are archived, i.e., no longer actively developed or maintained. It will not be removing any code from GitHub repos, but will articulate if the company is no longer actively developing or using a particular project. This will affect and reflect on its OSS projects as Netflix needs to change over time. Offer an enhanced roadmap for what new projects the company is planning to open, and which open projects are still in a state of heavy change. This will allow the community to better decide whether particular projects are appealing. Expose some of the internal metrics Netflix uses to evaluate its OSS projects - number of issues, commits, etc. This will provide better transparency regarding the maturity/velocity of each project. Docker is gradually becoming more accepted and Netflix is a prominent company, so the decision to Dockerise could well create ripples and additionally, move forward the container platform’s popularity and reach – if at all that’s possible, given that Microsoft, VMware, OpenStack and many others have all decided that Docker’s an impressive way to do containers.