Developers: Stop letting yourself and the community down. Talk about Open Source to your managers! Time to help give back — Company making millions

npm install angular-calendar
npm install @rx-angular/cdk
npm install date-fns

These days at a stroke of a few keys in command, your company has saved £1000 in development costs! But what about the people left behind to help innovate and save the company money. Developers are doing a disservice to our professions! It’s time we provide the companies with a reality check.

Not saying open source shouldn’t be free. But it shouldn’t be taken for granted as a free workforce!

Let’s make this clear; no, we shouldn’t be stopping open source development. I’m not saying companies should have to pay for every single package they use. But as developers, we are doing ourselves a disservice if we do not raise important packages the company structure to help reward developers that have contributed the time to help make a company much money. I HATE SOCIALIST, but managers can’t help if they are unaware.

I’m guilty; I’ve often gone to NPM in a company and added packages to our code repository. My latest project, which I’m currently working on, consists of packages that either sole developers develop all the way to a team of developers. These people offer open-source tools for free and save the company a small fortune in managing this in a house with your own in-house development team. Take RxAngular, for example, and it’s a way to speed up the angular by providing a powerful toolset for developing high-performance angular applications with or without NgZone.

My base NPM package list

Another good example is Angular-Calendar which many multi-national companies use. I’ve used it in multiple workplaces. This is a solo developer that has created a comprehensive calendar system.

The last example is date-fns, with over downloads 9 million daily downloads. This is a small team working on a budget of less the price of a full-time developer! However, I can bet the with over 77,000 known GitHub repos using this. It has saved companies thousands of pounds a year from a developer in house handling date manipulation.

This isn’t about the money.

So far, this is about money packages make over the year, sure you have some big libraries with multiple million-pound companies contributing to the framework, but these smaller packages are being left behind! The worst part is the minute they a bug in the package; developers form businesses expect it to be fixed the same day. But for these people to earn a living, they also have to work a 9–5 job to support their own family, so give them time! But how about if you can help donate to them? Maybe businesses should allow their staff time to give back to the community and fix the bugs themselves in-office hours. Stop relying on one or two people to fix issues so your company can create millions a year!

Have you ever told your boss about a SINGLE package of opensource then the business uses. — Not just React, Angular or VUE etc

But for this to all happen, the books lay firmly with developers. I know contractors that don’t understand the fundamentals of NPM. “You use the npm install, and I have the code!” “Why do you waste time on committing a little bit of open source code now and then” “why do open source where the money”. These quotes are exactly my point. You’re happy to use someone else’s code to make you money or businesses money but won’t give back to the community.

Answer this When was the last time you spoke to your boss, your line manager or the CTO/CEO of a business to explain about an open-source library that’s a fundamental part of the IT system and see what you can do to thank them or even repair the code? I know for me, I’m can shamefully say I have never brought it up, and I know this is the case for many developers. It saddens me to see npm packages with no funding, no help but used by everyone, and then after the npm install, the developer has to BEG for employment! This is shocking, but again Have you ever gone to your boss and said, the development of one of our core packages. Is looking for a job. Maybe we can help?

So to end this, I have a simple question if it wasn’t for the developers willing to give back to the community. Could you do your job? Could you develop that API or UI in the deadline you’re manage set you? I doubt it! So maybe its time we communicate the opensource software we use. Because more companies willing to give back to the community now. The chances the next person that business helps out is you!