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What do the cloud, big data and blockchain have in common? They all were aided in development through open-source or open-innovation — that is, collaborative — software development.
Open-source technology sharing isn't new, but different industries have adopted its attributes faster than others. The technology industry, especially Silicon Valley, was the first to use the internet for open-source technology and share it with others to help and improve the software and other platforms, products and utilities through collaborative efforts.
For the financial services industry, the Symphony Software Foundation, newly renamed the Fintech Open Source Foundation, serves that purpose, and Tuesday, along with the name change, it announced several new members, including UBS, GitHub, Red Hat, Thomson Reuters and NodeSource, as well as an expanded charter, according to the nonprofit organization.
"In the era of fintech platforms and decentralization, it's time for this industry to embrace the strategic principles of open collaboration that have driven the most exciting innovations of the last decade," said Gabriele Columbro, executive director of FINOS, in a statement.
The purpose of the foundation is to bring together the executive level with the developer and end user level, Columbro said. In addition, the organization believes that open-source technology can aid in common standards across the industry, thus helping firms be better positioned to capture growth opportunities.
