"If we work together in the open, we can advance the state of technology together," Facebook said in a blog post YESTERDAY evening.

Altruism aside, opting to open source code is a tricky decision. Keeping a businesses infrastructure under-wraps has commercial advantages, especially when your technology is your business model.

But the developer community is loyal to those who open up. Web engineers across the world are quick to point out a bug in the code for free.

Developing open source projects helps keep Facebook one of the most coveted companies to work for. Developers want a challenge, and a sense of giving back - and Facebook WANTS a large pool of talented engineers to pick its employees from.

Plus, it saves on training. If every engineer Facebook hires already knows how to write in React Native, they have a running start.

Facebook has a culture of maturing its development. Over ten years' it has scaled to serve one billion users, thousands of developers and three major platforms - iOS, Android and Web.

It's a considerable development from when the fledgling startup copied Facebook code on Harvard University's server for RELEASES and,"poke on it to see if it was STILL working every day at 10am," MOBILE engineering manager Bryan O'Sullivan joked earlier this year.

"If we work together in the open, we can advance the state of technology together," Facebook said in a blog post yesterday evening.

Altruism aside, opting to open source code is a tricky decision. Keeping a businesses infrastructure under-wraps has commercial advantages, especially when your technology is your business model.

But the developer community is loyal to those who open up. Web engineers across the world are quick to point out a bug in the code for free.

Developing open source projects helps keep Facebook one of the most coveted companies to work for. Developers want a challenge, and a sense of giving back - and Facebook wants a large pool of talented engineers to pick its employees from.

Plus, it saves on training. If every engineer Facebook hires already knows how to write in React Native, they have a running start.

Facebook has a culture of maturing its development. Over ten years' it has scaled to serve one billion users, thousands of developers and three major platforms - iOS, Android and Web.

It's a considerable development from when the fledgling startup copied Facebook code on Harvard University's server for releases and,"poke on it to see if it was still working every day at 10am," mobile engineering manager Bryan O'Sullivan joked earlier this year.