In today's world, most innovative software is hidden as proprietary software, to ensure that it maintains its monopolistic value to its creators, or the corporation behind it. This is understandable, since software is valuable, and this is the preferred business model for most software-based corporations. However, it also stifles collaboration, transparency and innovation.

A great number of the advances in software over the past decades would have been impossible if not for the power of open source software. Projects like Linux and Git, which power a large number of software systems are testaments to this fact. In fact, hardly any code would be tangible, without the solid foundation built by open-source software, as virtually every mainstream programming language is open-source. Building in the open enables contributors from all over the world to bring their different perspectives and experiences together, to create powerful solutions to important problems.

Overt is a project that aims to create communities around building open-source software to solve important and difficult real-world problems. Its main premise is the belief that the collaboration of developers around the globe, will produce software that will shape the future. We are building the future, in the open.