Another Good Reason for Open Source

Another Good Reason for Open Source

January 25, 2025

I was listening to Real Python and Simon mentioned something that I didn’t think of when creating Open Source software. Basically Open Source your code means that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel once you solve the problem. The problem with solving problems at work is that once you leave, you don’t have that code. His suggestion was to Open Source it, then you will always have access. If you perform to read instead of listen, he posted on his website.

Now normally I would leave this as a TIL but I wanted to expand on this further. For example, if you work somewhere where this is not possible, then it is an easy decision. Where I currently work this shouldn’t be a problem. The next step is what makes sense to Open Source.

For me most of my work is very specific to my job and that work won’t be Open Source. Instead I will be opening more of my helper scripts and some more general libraries. My first library will be log_to_db as this is a very general library to replace Python’s logging library and to log to a database instead of a file. I don’t need to really modify much as there is not anything in the code that is specific to my job. Most of my existing libraries are very work specific so this will be more of a philosophy going forward. Helper scripts most of work specific though some I can modify a little bit to make it more generic.