We are a TV streaming technology company that works with broadcasters around the world. We have been building streaming related technologies and services for over a decade, and our solutions have been used by millions of consumers around the world.
Our R&D team is always updating and evolving the software stack that we use to create multiscreen TV apps. Much of our software uses code written by others, which has been made available through open source projects – where we are also keen to contribute. Our tech framework consists of several small and independent software components, some of which could have benefits outside of our solutions, and industry niche. It is therefore of interest for us to open source some parts of our TV App framework for many reasons.
Like any other technology business, the software that we write is the core of what we do, our bread and butter. So why would or should we give our software away for free?
Why would, or should, we give our software away for free?
First of all, we think it’s time for us to give something back to the open source software community that we have been taking advantage of over the years. A large percentage of the software we use in our solutions is open source, so it is only fair that we contribute ourselves also for the greater good.
Secondly, we see that the quality of the software increases substantially when we start working with a goal to open source the project code base. When engineers write software that will be used and scrutinised by other developers, it motivates them to keep the code clean and to produce higher quality documentation. It’s the effect of a positive peer pressure.
We also have great focus on developer experience at Norigin Media. We believe it is important for developers to have a great experience when they write code, as working with great tools and software inspires them to make good solutions. Writing software for other developers also allows us to reuse much more of our own code across projects, which in turn makes us deliver better solutions in less time. Happy engineers = happy customers.
Happy engineers = happy customers
Software engineers are the new gold dust. Recruiting and retaining talent is a great challenge in today’s business environment. We believe that if engineers are given the opportunity to write software that will be used beyond a specific project, and allow them to get the credit they deserve within the community, this will help to motivate them and to achieve a greater good. We encourage our developers to share their work by blogging or presenting the solutions they make internally and externally. This also allows them to build a public portfolio that helps them to grow their career in the future.
Finally, we are keen to take a leading role as a software house, and sharing our code and knowledge will help us achieve such recognition within, but also outside of our specific domain.
When it comes to how we will run our open source initiative, it is clear that we don’t want to become an Open Source organisation managing huge open source projects and community. We intend to live by the concept of ‘Open Coding’, where we share some of the code we create and make it available for anyone to use. If other engineers want to contribute to projects, we are happy to support it, but it is not the main purpose for our initiative.
We intend to live by the concept of ‘Open Coding’
Our open source initiative is new and we just went ‘live’ by publishing an extremely useful topic – spatial navigation for remote controls on Smart TVs. We have published a separate blog about this that you can find aqui. In there you will also find links to the repo with documentation.
Smart TV Navigation with React (Open Source)
If you are a TV App developer, or a software engineer, please keep an eye on our Github, or subscribe to the blog!