Writing · Company
Why open source matters
From a first laptop to our own retrieval stack, why NeuronX builds on open source and gives back to it.
NeuronX Research
· 3 min read
When I got my first laptop for college, it came with a licensed copy of Windows 10 that cost an extra 10,000 INR. Many of my classmates switched to Linux because it was a useful skill to have on a résumé for job placements. I stuck with Windows, since I’d paid extra for it and worried something might go wrong if I switched operating systems or partitioned the drive. My mentor first introduced me to open source software when we used Certbot to get a free SSL certificate for a project website, instead of paying a cloud vendor for one.
Open source is an approach where a community develops and maintains software for everyone’s benefit. In a true open source project, the code and all ongoing improvements and discussions are public. Anyone can contribute, and use it for education, personal projects, commercial services, or as inspiration for something better, with no fees or licensing restrictions. Open source drives innovation across the software industry. Linux, React, Firefox, and WordPress show how open source creates thriving ecosystems for users and developers. Even Apple’s macOS and Sony’s PlayStation systems build on code from FreeBSD, an open source Unix-like operating system.
Supporting open source has become a marketing trend, much like being eco-friendly or plastic-free. But corporate initiatives aren’t always driven by concern for the cause. Sometimes they’re driven by quick marketing gains, reputation, and control of an ecosystem. Microsoft’s acquisitions of open source organizations like GitHub and Citus Data are examples of its contribution to the open source community.
Google acquired Android, originally an open source project, in 2005, promising to keep it free and open to developers. Over time, Google added its own proprietary apps and services, such as the Google Play Store, which became essential on most Android devices. That gave Google control over the Android ecosystem and limited developers’ and manufacturers’ freedom. Innovation slowed as the platform became less open, and concerns about data privacy grew as alternatives shrank. In 2020, Google announced that apps offering in-app purchases must use its billing system, which charges a commission of up to 30%. Indian developers objected strongly, since it would cut deeply into their earnings, especially for small businesses and startups. NeuronX focuses on progressive web apps (PWAs) as an open alternative.
Microsoft recently announced Recall, a Windows 11 feature that takes screenshots of the PC every few seconds. With Windows’ already complicated configuration and frequent automatic updates, freezes and slowdowns kept getting in the way of work. Folders filled with files that users couldn’t even open. I finally removed Windows from my laptop and switched to Linux Mint Cinnamon, a lightweight, customizable, open source operating system based on Ubuntu. I regret not switching sooner.
AWS is one of the top cloud providers, yet Amazon developers reportedly aren’t allowed to use AWS services in some of their products. In contrast, NeuronX offers the same AI that we use for our own projects. Our retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) system was first built on MongoDB Vector Search, since we already used MongoDB and the vector database fit the workflow. After extensive research, our R&D team moved to Postgres pgvector, an open source project with an active community and contributors like Supabase. In published benchmarks, pgvector ran vector search queries 4 to 15 times faster than MongoDB. Recent pgvector updates added indexing methods like HNSW (Hierarchical Navigable Small World) graphs, which make search faster and more accurate.
NeuronX uses and maintains open source alternatives, and contributes improvements back to the community, instead of relying on closed source technology. When a whole ecosystem builds on open source projects, progress comes faster than any of us expects.
An AI evangelist on the NeuronX team