Open source and Saas. If you're in tech, you've probably heard of these terms being thrown around here and there, and even if you aren't into tech, chances that you have at some point interacted with a product defined by these two terms are very high.

Open source by definition includes software whose source is publicly made available to everyone. Even though the source code is freely made available for everyone to inspect and check that nothing shady is going on behind the scenes, it doesn't necessarily mean that it must be free. The same goes for free software free as in speech, not as in beer, which emphasizes the freedom of the user's to do whatever they want with it. Even though free software and Open source might interlap in so many ways in their definition, free software is software, while an open source project might be just a couple lines of code you make public. GNU + Linux, VLC, Blender, and anything with the Apache rubber stamp are all open source. After seeing the success of open source projects, big companies have also open sourced some of their work. VScode by Microsoft, Angular 2 by Google, and react by Facebook open source are some top tier tools that would probably and most likely be proprietary if we were to turn back time to two decades ago. Heck, at some point in History, Java was proprietary.

Switching gears to the other elephant in this virtual room, we have software as a Service (SaaS), a product or software made available to users over the internet for a subscription. Netflix, Spotify, Crunchyroll etc. Any software that must be connected to the internet to work and that you must pay for can be defined as a SaaS product.

Most SaaS products are proprietary, and their code is hidden from their users unless you're Twitch, of course. Why? Because most of these platforms are extorting millions and millions of dollars from you by selling your data, but hey, you get to watch the latest, most incredible show by Leonardo DiCaprio and go to Twitter to share your opinion with the entire planet? (I'm not being sarcastic)

I know the tension is killing most of you reading this masterpiece of a blog post, wanting to know what I am trying to sell you. Let's change that.

Chatwoot is an open source software as a service product that allows companies to interact with their customers/clients from the website alone and other social mediums such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. So why Chatwoot? What makes it better than the rest of the bunch.

To paraphrase an article by BigCommerce on the importance of open source suggested, by removing the barriers between innovators, open sourced projects allow and drive competition and innovations within the community, enabling new or improving on previous projects. Chatwoot is a perfect embodiment of this sentiment. Initially a customer support software, the project failed to take off as a business and was shut down. Still, to the surprise of the maintainers, they got a lot of love from the community when they decided to open source it during the Hacktoberfest. This is hugely thanks to the support from open source contributors, which has enabled it to thrive and compete with industry SaaS giants that also offer customer support software.

By integrating the open source community into their community, the maintainers of Chatwoot have enabled new and innovative ideas to be incorporated into their product while also getting support to fix previous bugs. This makes Chatwoot even more secure. Every day, we see it when a hacker finds a vulnerability in proprietary software and decides to exploit it because the security team did not see it or had not experienced enough to find that security bug and patch it. This is different for open source companies. While security bugs exist and are commonplace to anything that is ones and zeros, open source companies have the added benefit that everyone has access to the code and the permission to modify it. All while finding security flaws without the worry of having to worry about the End User Agreements that users of proprietary software have. Chatwoot also enjoys this added advantage. With developers from across the globe analyzing and testing the code for any vulnerabilities and patches being ruled out for fixes, you can ensure that your customers will be safe from exploitations. And even if a bug is discovered, someone from the community will be quick enough to roll out a patch for the fix. Another way that an open source project is taking on industry giants.

Finally, open source projects enjoy the benefit of longevity because someone somewhere, especially newcomers to the open source world, is always looking for a project to contribute to. As previously stated, Chatwoot died once, but after three days...

No, it's not the bad ending you were thinking of it to be.

Chatwoot, as a proprietary project, once shut down because it did not take off. But once it was because open source contributions from around the world and from newcomers started coming in. The maintainers may even decide to hand over the project to new ones. However, they can be assured that support from the community will still be coming in. An excellent example of this longevity is GNU + Linux. This powerhouse operating system drives the internet. Although the project has been around for over two decades, it is still thriving and going on strong. This is not because GNU + Linux has some hidden piece of code that is monetized. It is because of the solid open source community behind it. When it started, folks in the tech industry were hungry for an operating system that they could extend, and they still are. There are no limitations on what you can do with it; extend it as you please and configure it according to what you like and dislike. As with Chatwoot, you can also self-host and extend some functionality if the default configuration does not please you. A feature that industry giant proprietary software does not come with.

Open Source SAAS projects are challenging SaaS giants! It's a brave new world!