March 13, 2023
Following Elon Musk’s tweet last week about Twitter open sourcing its algorithm, there have been reports that the people tasked with implementing it have been fired as part of Musk’s firing spree.
Musk stated that he wanted to open-source Twitter’s algorithm even before acquiring it, and he stated it again when announcing his intention to acquire it in April 2022, but nothing has changed.
Twitter open source refers to the various software projects released under open-source licenses by Twitter. Open-source software is software that has its source code freely available to the public, allowing anyone to study, modify, and distribute it. Over the years, Twitter has released a wide range of open-source projects, including tools for data visualization, distributed computing, and machine learning.
The situation has changed because Musk’s firing spree has eliminated the software developers and engineers who understand the code behind the algorithm and what needs to be done to open source that code.
Will Norris, Twitter’s former open-source lead, stated that: “Most of the key people that were working on open source at Twitter have left. All of the engineers that I worked with on open source are gone.” This means Musk will be unable to open-source Twitter’s code because he lacks the necessary personnel.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheRegister.
