Open-source community

Important from a business perspective and still largely underused by the business is the open-source community within machine learning. Much of research is available for free on GitHub, a repository of code, and can be picked up and used jointly with other pieces to build something unique you need. Never making a prototype was so fast and cheap as now. The open-source community is also an excellent source for potential hires as it accurately shows what a given person is capable of by just looking at his or her code repository.

Business-wise supporting the open-source community has many advantages: access to the talent pool, staying informed about current research. Moreover, it can bring business leads. Recall the model of Red Hat which was responsible for maintaining Linux and then earning money via support and customisations. In the end, Red Hat was acquired by IBM in one of the largest tech acquisitions to date at massive $34 billion closed in 2019.

GitHub itself was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 for $7.5 billion,7 and Kaggle was acquired by Google in 2017.8 This not only shows how important open-source community is for business but actually that you can make a business out of open source efforts if you’re able to deliver a great product and build a community of engaged users around it.