Ant Group OSPO’s Open Source Philosophy: From an Infinite Game to Strategic Practice

In a keynote at OSPO Summit 2022, Ant Group’s OSPO head Bian Sikang shared the organization’s open‑source worldview, describing open source as an "infinite game" that emphasizes long‑term consensus, openness, and continuous evolution rather than competition.

Philosophy (Dao): Open source drives trust and technological innovation, uniting commercial and technical value. Drawing on concepts from "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "antifragility," the talk highlights how openness gives software resilience and adaptability.

Legal Framework (Fa): Open source is defined by three core elements—code, licenses, and contributors. Code must be publicly visible and collaboratively decided while protecting original authors; licenses serve as legal tools and shared standards; contributors form the community’s backbone, ranging from users to co‑builders.

Practice (Shu): Ant Group aims to solve three problems through open source: breakthrough core‑technology innovation, fostering technical sharing and trust, and building a commercial ecosystem that rewards contributors responsibly.

The OSPO’s first year focused on three pillars: reducing legal and security risks, improving engineering culture and methodology, and leveraging open source for business growth. Concrete actions included establishing mechanisms for timely issue correction, designing release processes, building the Ant Open‑Source brand, and pursuing win‑win collaborations.

In the second year, Ant OSPO refined its internal and external strategy around a "one‑center, two‑basic‑points" model, emphasizing systematic open‑source foundations, talent cultivation, multi‑party cooperation, and strengthening community awareness.

The roadmap is described in four parts: Part 1 – worldview; Part 2 – moving from 0 to 1 with exploration and uniqueness; Part 3 – scaling from 1 to 10, testing strategy and taste; Part 4 – expanding from 10 to 100, treating open source as an endless game.

Future directions stress long‑term strategic focus, talent development across technical, consensus‑building, and business‑oriented skills, and the belief that every individual can be an open‑source evangelist.

Images illustrating the internal and external open‑source initiatives are included throughout the original presentation.