Universities Foster the Next Big Tech Innovation Through Open Source

While many technical innovations are produced by massive teams of developers at industry giants such as Google and Microsoft, a number of game-changing technologies are sprouting from grass roots efforts at universities. Through the advent of open source software, multiple developers at colleges around the globe are able to contribute code and innovate new developments without a penny of commercial investment. Tech leaders and investors alike are surprised to learn how the next big breakthrough in technology may not come from their own development teams, but from groups of students and educators collaborating through the Internet.

Collaborations between universities have been advancing the state of technology for many years. Successful university collaborations have been adopted by NASDAQ leaders and become part of our everyday lives. While unknown to the layman, the Kerberos network authentication protocol grew from a project at MIT and is now used by virtually all of the top tech companies, including Apple, Google and Microsoft. What does that mean to you? Every time you login to Windows with your username and password, you’re using Kerberos. It’s part of the default configuration within Windows, and it all started with students and faculty collaborating with network services provided by Project Athena. With funding from IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1983, Kerberos grew from a university-based open source project to its inclusion in every major operating system.