In this episode of "Explain It Like I'm Kevin," join Discover creative Kevin Rogers as he finds out what open source is and why it's important. Kevin is joined by Roland Krocin, Director of Technology, Capabilities & Innovation, who explains how cooking up grandma's spaghetti can be a delicious metaphor. Technology can be pretty confusing, but that is all about to change.
Transcript
Kevin: Today we are talking about open source! I want to know what it is and why it’s important. To help me answer those questions, I’ve got Roland Krocin, Director of Technology, Capability & Innovation. Thanks for coming.
Roland: What’s up man, how you doing? You know you picked a great topic. Open source. It's everywhere. Right now you can go fork an interesting component repo from GitHub, inspect and adjust it as needed, and integrate right into your code…. (confused Kevin)… pretty straightforward.
Kevin: Um, maybe actually, can you slow it down and maybe explain it to me like I'm, like I'm Kevin?
Roland: Sure thing Kevin. So, think of your grandma's world famous spaghetti. If she would never let you into the kitchen to see what she used to make it, it would be proprietary, or closed source. But if you had access to the recipe and knew every ingredient in that sauce it would be open source! No more hiding the secret sauce.
Kevin: So if I needed to make it for friends that had dietary restrictions, I could make it any way I want.
Roland: Exactly. At its core, open source software is the kind of software whose code is available to see. The code is not hidden or proprietary and can be freely inspected or modified. In which case, the entire user base benefits from contributions that are made to add features or fix bugs. Discover continues to invest in open source in the careers and communities it builds, which you can check out at technology.discover.com. And just like one of Discover's values, it all gets better together.
Kevin: All right I think I understand open source technology now. Thank you so much for joining me and helping me out with this.
Roland: Yeah no problem Kevin, anytime. But are you getting hungry? I think we should go get some spaghetti now.
Kevin: Yeah it's spaghetti time.
Roland: Let's go.
