Substrate is going open source. We are working on software around clinical information, medical workflows, and systems that may eventually become part of how doctors and researchers work with medical information. We think more of that work should be inspectable rather than hidden behind a company boundary.
Opening the code makes it possible for others to understand how parts of Substrate work, identify problems, suggest changes, and contribute improvements. It also gives researchers and developers the ability to use parts of the work in their own projects and take it in directions we may not have considered ourselves.
There is also a more basic reason for doing this. Software used around medicine should be open to scrutiny. That does not mean every internal system, security detail, unreleased project, or piece of research needs to be public. Some things should remain private. But where there is no good reason to keep the work closed, we would rather make it easier to inspect and understand.
Our first public repository is Substrate Workspace, available at https://github.com/Substrate-Labs-IN/substrate-workspace. Workspace is now public on GitHub, and more repositories will follow as they become ready to document and maintain in the open.
This also changes how we work. Documentation, contribution guidelines, issue tracking, security reporting, and external contributions will become part of the normal development process rather than something added later.
We are still early, and much of Substrate is still being worked on. Open source gives people a clearer view of that work and, where useful, a way to participate in it.
