Hey friends! Sloan, DEV Moderator and mascot, coming back at ya with another question submitted by a DEV community member. 🦥

For those unfamiliar with the series, this is another installment of Sloan's Inbox. You all send in your questions, I ask them on your behalf anonymously, and the community leaves comments to offer advice. Whether it's career development, office politics, industry trends, or improving technical skills, we cover all sorts of topics here. If you want to send in a question or talking point to be shared anonymously via Sloan, that'd be great; just scroll down to the bottom of the post for details on how.

Let's see what we have for this week...

Today's question is:

I'm a late-in-life career changer and pretty new to the world of software development. The deeper I go, the more fascinating it gets! It makes sense to me that there's so much free learning materials out there on the web because software developers are very online people. Still, the whole concept of open source is kind of surprising to me. The fact that there's a place like GitHub where people are writing code together freely and creating amazing software is truly awesome. My question is why do folks do this? How did this come to be? Don't get me wrong, I'm really happy it's like this. But, it can't be all roses, right? Are there downsides I've yet to learn about it? Are we in jeopardy of losing open source? It feels too good to be true.

Share your thoughts and let's help a fellow DEV member out! Remember to keep kind and stay classy. 💚

Want to submit a question for discussion or ask for advice? Visit Sloan's Inbox! You can choose to remain anonymous.