Red Hat completes open sourcing of 3scale code

At Red Hat we have always been proud of our open source heritage and commitment. We are delighted that more of the industry now shares our viewpoint, and more companies are looking to promote their open source bona fides of late.

Open source software energizes developers and teams of committed developers working in parallel can outproduce the large development hierarchies of the last generation. We believe working upstream with open source communities is an important innovation strategy.

Occasionally, however, innovation does originate in traditional commercial organizations under a proprietary development model. Three years ago, Red Hat discovered just such a company that was doing exciting things in the API economy.

While 3scale was not open source, the software was available, documented, and easy to try (not to mention having innovative features). Culturally and technologically, 3scale was a good fit for Red Hat.

Still, Red Hat is committed to open source software. When Red Hat acquired 3scale it was only a matter of time until it would be open sourced in some fashion. But the process isn't instantaneous.

Taking an existing proprietary software package and opening the source involves more than just publishing the code to an open repository website. Inspection of the code is required to make sure that dependencies are under suitable open source licenses. Red Hat has released 3scale code under the MIT and Apache Software License (ASL) v2, both permissive open source licenses.

In some cases we may need to rewrite parts of the codebase to make it suitable for release. Teams must also learn how to open source software, and be prepared to start receiving input from developers outside the company. In short, it's much more than throwing code over the wall. An open source project is a process, not an end result.

We embarked on this process shortly after the acquisition, starting with the modules, such as our API gateway components that were of most interest to developers looking to extend functionality.

Today we’re pleased to announce the completion of open sourcing the family of 3scale API Management products. We invite you to come visit the open source community at 3scale.github.io, or see the actual code modules at github.com/3scale.

Our 3scale development efforts are moving forward with new features, new participation, and new ideas. Come by, see what we're doing, and join in the fun!