How Equinix Supercharges Critical Open Source Projects
From kernel.org to Alpine and Flatcar Linux, many important OSS projects run their critical workloads on Equinix-contributed infrastructure
Open source software is everywhere. It’s permeated all stages of software development. Contributing to OSS projects, which benefit individuals, organizations and the community at large, can be very rewarding for both seasoned developers and folks who are simply excited by technology. But, for a variety of reasons, your typical project participant tends to contribute lines of code only.
Not everyone is a developer, and being one definitely isn’t a prerequisite for meaningful participation in OSS. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a meaningful contribution to open source projects. If you’re multilingual, for example, you can make an impact helping with a project’s translation and localization efforts. Proofreading, updating and creating guides and documentation are all critical to getting new users on board. Spreading the word at local community events or meetups helps attract contributors.
The Power of Hardware Contributions
While Equinix developers have used and contributed to many important open source software projects, one of our biggest and most impactful contributions is not software at all.
With Equinix Metal now in 25 of Equinix’s nearly 250 data centers around the world (and counting), our single-tenant cloud business sure has a lot of hardware. Our unique way of supporting open source is providing compute and network infrastructure through our Open Source Partner Program (OSPP). The program started in 2017 with a monthly donation of $25,000, which tripled in 2020. It has continued to evolve, and maintainers of more than 100 open source projects now regularly spin up powerful bare metal servers around the world for free to run their builds, tests, CI/CD, proofs of concept, workshops and much, much more.
Some of the critical projects the program supports are NTP Pool, which uses Equinix Metal server clusters to provide highly accurate time, and kernel.org, whose underlying CDN runs on our infrastructure, acting as the main distribution system for Linux kernel source code. Alpine Linux and Flatcar Linux, whose build tests require access to the underlying hardware on multiple architectures, use Equinix’s cloud for those purposes.
Any organization, regardless of its core expertise, can find its way to contribute to the open source community and drive innovation!
Equinix @ All Things Open
If you want to learn more about the Equinix Open Source Partner Program, come see us at All Things Open 2023 in Raleigh! Come by our booth between October 15 and 17 to meet our staff and learn more about our company, our cloud services and how we can supercharge your OSS project. (And be sure to snag a freebie and enter one of our many raffles!)
Equinix Speakers
- How a Hardware Company Contributes to Open Source Software | Fen Aldrich & Ed Vielmetti | Monday Oct 16 | 1:45 pm-2:30 pm ET
- The Bits Must Flow: Networking through the abstractions | Fen Aldrich | Tuesday Oct 17 | 2:45 pm – 3:30 pm ET
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The Featured Blog Posts series highlights posts from partners and members of the All Things Open community leading up to ATO 2023.