An open source project is getting significant investment from a major American corporation.
Believe it or not Walmart, the mega retailer, has spent more than $2 million on the Hapi project, which is a “rich framework for building applications and services” that “enables developers to focus on writing reusable application logic instead of spending time building infrastructure” according to its website.
In a blog post, Senior Developer at Walmart Labs Eran Hammer explained the company’s decision to pursue open source. Every decision the company makes is done after performing a cost-benefit analysis, and it appears as though the mega retailer expects to see a return on its investment.
Here’s how it works: Since Hapi is open source, any company can use the code, mainly created by Walmart’s programmers, for their own needs. As other companies adopt the code, their developers will probably modify it to fit their requirements better. Because those developers aim to enhance the code with their changes, they will likely ask for their updates to be added to the main project.
In other words, Walmart is developing Hapi in hopes that external companies will adopt the framework. In turn, those companies will improve the code even more, and Walmart will benefit as a result.
“For example, every five startups using Hapi translated to the value of one full-time developer, while every 10 large companies translated to one full-time senior developer,” Hammer writes.
By investing in Hapi, Walmart hopes to gain high-quality code improvements without the costs of recruiting, hiring, and training new staff. By paying a small team of coders to work on Hapi, the company effectively gets the output of three people, for instance.
Many businesses are attracted to open source technology because of its generally non-existent price tag. But businesses that see beyond that benefit are sure to see a better return on their investments, as Walmart has demonstrated.