Open source turned 21 this year, following the launch of the Open Source Initiative in February 1998. With that milestone comes maturity: resilience, responsibility, approachability, and growth. Open source software (OSS) is ubiquitous and for a very good reason: it helps companies innovate better and faster. But there are still risks inherent in version updates, bug reports, patches and more.
These risks can be identified and managed through open source audits. I’ve been working in open source software (OSS) for a very long time. Just ten years ago, audits of OSS were considered optional parts of due diligence or adjunct to acquisitions. Today, they’re no longer optional. They reveal answers about who wrote the OSS, where it is deployed, any existing issues, and whether or not the issues have been fixed.