Square’s Open Approach to Code
SAN FRANCISCO – October 1, 2013 – Square, the company making commerce easy for everyone, has released more than a quarter of a million lines of code in more than 60 open source projects—a project, on average, every 2.5 weeks.
“Open source is part of our DNA,” said Bob Lee, Square CTO. “As a member of the open source community—and a company that’s benefited from many open source libraries—we have a responsibility to pay it forward. We always have the mindset to open source our code when we build.”
With the recent release of Kochiku, a CI system designed for partitioning long test suites, Square has open sourced 62 projects over the past three years. Today, several major technology companies rely on code open sourced by Square:
Google, Netflix, and Dropbox use Dagger, a dependency injector for Android;
The New York Times, PayPal, OUYA, GroupMe, and MeetMe use Picasso, an image downloading and caching library for Android;
Uber uses Retrofit, a networking library for talking to remote servers.
Square’s contributions to the open source community have received more than 15x the interactions of Groupon, Intuit, and PayPal combined. In total, Square’s projects have been forked more than 4,000 times and starred more than 25,000 times.
“Open source libraries speed up development and improve software,” said Josh Bloch, Square consulting engineer and former Chief Java Architect at Google. “When we open source our code, we receive scrutiny, bug fixes, and enhancements from the entire community. Instead of solving the same problems again and again, we as a community solve them once and for all, and we all reap the benefits.”
For a full list of Square’s open source projects, visit square.github.io. For additional background information on Square’s open source projects, visit Square’s engineering blog at corner.squareup.com.
About Square, Inc.
Square is making commerce easy for everyone. Whether a business needs to accept credit cards, manage a full point of sale system, or sell online, Square offers simple and affordable tools so businesses of all sizes can start, run, and grow. The company began with a free credit card reader for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, allowing businesses to accept credit cards anywhere, anytime, for one low, transparent rate. Square now offers a full suite of hardware and software tools including Square Register, Square Market, Square Wallet, and Square Stand. Founded in 2009, and headquartered in San Francisco, Square is currently available in the United States, Canada, and Japan.