Red Hat has completed open sourcing the API management software of 3scale, the company it bought in June 2016 for an undisclosed sum, saying it has been working on the project for the past three years.
The company’s full code base has been released under the permissive Apache Software License (ASL) 2.0 licence, with the open sourcing process “much more than throwing code over the wall”, Red Hat said.
In a short post by the company’s David Codelli on Thursday, he noted: “When Red Hat acquires 3scale it was only a matter of time until it would be open sourced in some fashion. “But the process isn’t instantaneous.”
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“Taking an existing proprietary software package and opening the source involves more than just publishing the code to an open repository website. Inspection of the code is required to make sure that dependencies are under suitable open source licenses…”
He added: “”In some cases we may need to rewrite parts of the codebase to make it suitable for release. Teams must also learn how to open source software, and be prepared to start receiving input from developers outside the company. In short, it’s much more than throwing code over the wall.”
What does 3scale Do?
APIs control online access to particular applications and resources.
3Scale produces, among other things, a containerised gateway to Red Hat’s OpenShift that is useful to developers using OpenShift and provides a range of tools including API traffic management,
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Red Hat now sells a “self service” version of the software starting at $750/month, which gives users the ability to manage up to 3 APIs, with control for five admins and the right to handle up to 500,000 API calls per day.
Those willing to get down and dirty with the code, can now, choose to do it for “free” if they so desire.
The code modules can be found at github.com/3scale.
