The document outlines the evolution of automation tools, tracing their development from proprietary systems like Mercury Interactive to open source solutions such as Appium. It highlights significant milestones including the rise of mobile application automation and the shift towards open source in automation practices by 2020. The focus is on supporting open source semantics for various automation types, including test automation and RPA.

2. 20041990
Mercury
Interactive and a
number of other
closed proprietary
systems which used
Visual Basic as
their primary
definition language
dominated the
market in
automation
As apps began to live in the
browser, open source
communities blossomed.
Jason Huggins created
JavaScriptTestRunner for
use at ThoughtWorks
They ended up releasing it
as open source and a
community
OPEN
CLOSED

3. 2011
As apps move into the
palm of our hand via our
mobile phones
Another Open source
product for mobile
application automation
Dan Cuellar creates
Appium (called iosAuto at
the time)
OPEN

4. 2010 CLOSED
After many years of
successful corporate
acquisitions and sales
The LoadRunner toolset
has evolved into another
very popular Closed Test
Framework
UFT

5. 2010 CLOSED
Moving beyond test
automation
Many systems develop
ability to record and
playback UI actions for
Business Processes
These closed systems
drive the growth in RPA

6. 2015
A new wave of automation
in System Operation and
deployment becomes very
common and essential with
many open source
solutions
OPEN

7. 2020
Our approach is to go all in on
Open Source.
We will support translation and
conversion to the open source
semantics of automation
We support RPA
We support Test Automation
We support Open Source
OPEN