Why we use and contribute to open source software
This is Kevin McEntee, VP of Systems & ECommerce Engineering here at Netflix. Netflix is a technology company. We develop and apply great software technology to deliver a great streaming video experience.
Context & Ripple Effects
Kevin McEntee's post lands at the end of a month in which Netflix repositioned itself explicitly as a technology company rather than a DVD mailer: a companion post from John Ciancutti argued for HTML5 across devices days earlier, and November brought a new $7.99 streaming-only plan plus a multi-year FilmDistrict deal for first-run films. The open-source argument is the engineering half of that same story — a service scaling streaming onto commodity infrastructure needs shared software to keep pace.
McEntee frames Netflix's use of open source inside its Systems & ECommerce Engineering group, which sits behind the streaming experience the company had just rebuilt for the PS3. Coming from a VP rather than an individual contributor, the post reads as a deliberate statement of engineering culture at the moment streaming became the core product.
First-order effects
- For Netflix, contributing back to the projects it depends on converts infrastructure spending into engineering credibility — useful currency for hiring systems talent while the streaming-only plan accelerates traffic growth.
Second-order effects
- Rival streaming services and device makers face pressure to explain their own software practices; a platform like Sony's PS3 benefits when the services running on it push fixes upstream into the shared web stack Ciancutti's HTML5 argument relies on.
Third-order effects
- If large-scale streamers treat core infrastructure as shared open source, competitive differentiation migrates up the stack to data and personalization layers — where Netflix's Screen Digest-cited growth numbers suggest it intends to compete.
The trend: Consumer internet companies scaling on commodity cloud infrastructure are shifting from consuming open source to funding and contributing it, making shared infrastructure a recruiting and strategy tool rather than a cost center.