Hello, world! At TikTok, we're known for inspiring creativity through short-form mobile videos, but did you know we also foster innovation through open source? In this post, we'll explore our open source philosophy, key projects, and how you can get involved.

What is open source?

Open source software is publicly available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute. This collaborative model brings technologists from around the world together to collectively evolve projects, pushing the boundaries of innovation. At TikTok, we're committed to this culture, not only to improve software but to inspire creativity within the tech community.

TikTok's open source philosophy

Open source is more than just free code; it's about collaboration, community, and trust. By contributing to open source, TikTok connects with a global network of developers and researchers to build better software. It's also a way for us to showcase our development processes, building transparency with the public.

TikTok's open source projects

Here's a look at some of the open source projects we're actively developing:

Privacy Innovation

Privacy Innovation is our initiative aimed at advancing Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs). This open-source effort includes several sub-projects:

• PrivacyGo: A protocol set combining PETs for secure, privacy-preserving computations. This helps advertisers measure ad effectiveness while safeguarding user privacy.
• PETAce: A cryptographic framework enabling secure data sharing between organizations without revealing sensitive details.
• Data Clean Room: A framework that enables cloud-based data collaboration using trusted execution environments (TEEs), allowing private data analysis without compromising individual privacy.

Explore more on PrivacyInnovation.io or visit our GitHub organization.

TikTok OpenSDK

TikTok's OpenSDKs for iOS and Android allow developers to integrate TikTok into their apps, offering login with TikTok, video sharing, and embedding capabilities. Learn more about our products and development kits.

TikTok Business SDK

Our Business SDK helps developers automate and optimize advertising on TikTok with APIs for marketing, account management, and creator collaboration. These APIs allow programmatic access to TikTok Ads Manager and insights from TikTok’s Creator Marketplace.

Sparo

Sparo optimizes Git operations for large monorepos, providing faster cloning and improved CI performance. Check out Sparo on GitHub.

Contributions to third-party open source projects

TikTok isn't just focused on its own projects—we've made significant contributions to popular open source tools:

• ESLint: We introduced a feature to manage bulk suppressions when linting large codebases.
• RushJS: We contributed optimizations for parallelized builds and workspace management.
• PNPM: We developed 'pnpm-sync', a tool to better manage injected dependencies.

Community Engagement

We're passionate about being part of the broader open source community, whether through our own projects or community events. Some highlights from the past year include:

• Open Source Summit North America 2024: We hosted a session on applied cryptography for privacy, met thousands of professionals, and engaged in exciting conversations about open source trends.
• Other
  Summits and Conferences: By participating in prestigious academic conferences like USENIX Security, PET Summit, and NDSS, we connected with researchers, professors, and students, gathering valuable feedback and insights to improve our projects. We've also hosted our own summits like the TikTok Shop Developer Summit.
• Local Meetups: We've organized local meetups featuring speakers from the community, offering a platform for developers to share knowledge and learn from each other.

Future plans

Looking ahead, we have big plans to expand our open source contributions. From launching new projects to enhancing existing ones, we’re continuously pushing the limits of what’s possible in open source technology. Stay tuned for updates and tutorials in future posts.

How you can get involved

Interested in contributing to TikTok's open source projects? Explore our GitHub repositories, suggest features, report issues, or contribute code. We also invite you to join our meetups and community events, where you can connect with other passionate developers.

We hope this post gives you a glimpse into TikTok's open source world. Whether you're a developer, researcher, or tech enthusiast, we encourage you to engage with our projects and be part of the open source movement at TikTok. Stay connected with us on GitHub and register for DevDay 2024.