A few weeks ago, we told you about our SPS Guilds. The Open-Source Guild (OSG) was formed in 2020 with a two-fold goal of responsible Open Source Software (OSS) usage and giving back to the community through open source contribution and creation. Early on we realized this as a very large goal that we should drive toward this goal in an iterative fashion. As a group, we decided to initially focus on giving back to the tech community through OSS creation. The OSG formed this initial focus for two reasons. First, through our usage of OSS we are automatically a part of the OSS community. Being part of a community is not just about taking but giving back. We can give back to the community through contributions to the projects we use as well as creation of new open source projects. Secondly, marketing what we work on in technology at SPS as innovative and interesting. Instead of telling potential candidates that we work on interesting projects, we give tangible examples through our creations and contributions in the open source space.
‘nap’ is the first project sponsored by the Open Source Guild at SPS Commerce. This first step was a big one and took a lot of cooperation and partnership with the company’s technical leadership and legal team. One of SPS Commerce’s core values is “giving back” to our communities. We hope that this project is just the first in a long line of contributions that we can give back to our open-source community. You will be able to read all about ‘nap’ in Dave Gustafson’s upcoming blog post later this week.
