Open Source Software For Risk Analytics - A Valid Option

OpenGamma was one of the winners of the Belfast regional showcase of the Innotribe Startup Challenge. We will thus see them, along with 14 other startups,  in the upcoming finals at Innotribe@Sibos in Osaka (29 Oct- 1 Nov, 2012), which promises to be amazing (register here to participate to Innotribe@Sibos). I’ve met Kirk Wylie, CEO of OpenGamma, and asked him to contribute his story and the story of OpenGamma for this blog....

One of the most common questions we get is: “What do you mean by open source?” We use the term open source in its full sense: all code freely downloadable online, along with full documentation, user forums, bug tracking, and so on. There aren’t any catches here. To date, every component that we’re legally allowed to release under an Open Source license has been.

However, although our approach is radical in the industry, our goal was never just to build open source technology. We wanted to build the best platform for financial analytics and risk management possible. We’ve released it under an open source license because that’s what the market told us they want.

In the past, the industry has had three choices: buy a traditional, siloed trading system and spend years trying to get it to do what end users wanted; pay for an expensive, opaque external service; or build everything from scratch. With choices like that, it’s no wonder the preferred choice has been to build from scratch. Over and over. Within the same firm, across firms, developers keep building the same components because vendors haven’t given them what they need...