news unrolled

Post: Twitter has released parts of its source code

Categories

Should I expose my software’s code or better protect it so I can identify problems faster? Twitter has now opted for a little more transparency.


Twitter has released parts of its software for everyone to watch. The text messaging service provided the source code for the Timeline recommendation algorithm on its Github developer platform on Friday. It can be viewed there.

Twitter: “New Age of Transparency”

Also, external programmers can look for bugs or suggest improvements. On the company blog The US group described the process as “the first step towards a new era of transparency”. in another article The processes behind the recommendation mechanism are also described.

We have tried to be as transparent as possible with this publication.

Company blog Twitter

On the other hand, Twitter reportedly hides codes that could endanger users’ security or privacy. In addition, the parts of the program that are responsible for advertising recommendations are not made public. Also, Github does not include data to be used to train algorithms.

Musk wants better Twitter

The group, led by Tesla boss Elon Musk, called for cooperation on the Twitter code. “We hope to leverage the collective intelligence and expertise of the global community to help us find issues and suggest improvements that will ultimately lead to better Twitter.”

Open source is a software development philosophy in which the source code of programs is made public. Among other things, this should increase confidence in the software and make it easier to find bugs. The most well-known representative of this approach is the Linux operating system, which also forms the basis of Google’s Android mobile operating system.

Professionals and hobby programmers all over the world work together on code. For example, Microsoft is following a closed source approach with Windows. The source code is strictly locked and only available to the company’s own developers. Microsoft bought Github for $7.5 billion in 2018.

Source: ZDF

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *