Like the open source myths for business, the technical side is often misunderstood as well. It may be that your IT Director isn’t fully up to speed yet, so let’s make the discussion a little more technology focused.
Like the open source myths for business, the technical side is often misunderstood as well. It may be that your IT Director isn’t fully up to speed yet, so let’s make the discussion a little more technology focused.
“Maintenance is an issue as nobody takes responsibility for the code.”
This point is often raised, as if conventional software is rigorously maintained – it’s commonly accepted that some proprietary software became so bloated because so much of the early code was poorly documented and so things were carried forward ‘just in case’.
In the open source model, maintenance is distributed across the developer community, ensuring a higher level of commitment thanks to peer review and widely accepted standards. This model can be expected to expand substantially as open source becomes less a platform than an eco-system with enterprise-strength applications gaining wider acceptance. For example, OpenOffice has the potential to be the desktop application suite of choice across all sizes of organisation. That is only going to be possible with the correct maintenance procedures in place. However, we expect with better crafted code to see less of the patch mania that characterised much of the software coming from Redmond!
“Security is an issue.”
Yes, security is an issue for all of us in the development community but, in general, open source software is more fault-tolerant than proprietary software. With almost daily patches emanating from software giants, is proprietary software secure?
“Maintenance is an issue as nobody takes responsibility for the code.”
This point is often raised, as if conventional software is rigorously maintained – it’s commonly accepted that some proprietary software became so bloated because so much of the early code was poorly documented and so things were carried forward ‘just in case’.
In the open source model, maintenance is distributed across the developer community, ensuring a higher level of commitment thanks to peer review and widely accepted standards. This model can be expected to expand substantially as open source becomes less a platform than an eco-system with enterprise-strength applications gaining wider acceptance. For example, OpenOffice has the potential to be the desktop application suite of choice across all sizes of organisation. That is only going to be possible with the correct maintenance procedures in place. However, we expect with better crafted code to see less of the patch mania that characterised much of the software coming from Redmond!
“Security is an issue.”
Yes, security is an issue for all of us in the development community but, in general, open source software is more fault-tolerant than proprietary software. With almost daily patches emanating from software giants, is proprietary software secure?
“There is no quality control in free software.”
There is a bit of confusion here – yes, there may be fewer fixed quality control processes but that’s because only stable code makes it into an open source application.
“There’s no support.”
That may well have been true some time back, but today there are lots of options for support. There’s global support from the community – one of the strengths of open source! – Plus major Linux distributors and hardware vendors now have comprehensive support plans. The support is professional and it’s there.
“Open source has some uses, but it’s not ready for the enterprise.”
Where do they come up with these arguments? The reality is that open source applications are all over Fortune 500 enterprises. Not to mention two-thirds of all Web sites are now running on open source (Apache). And some of the largest IT vendors like IBM and HP are now committed to open source.
In Q1/07, just one Linux player gained 10,000 new customers – enterprise customers. The time is right.
“An operating system’s just half the story – what about the applications?”
This is perhaps the strangest myth still to be getting any credence. Not only do we have industrial-strength applications gaining significant traction in major enterprises, but much of the open source community’s coding focus is on applications. That’s almost the whole point – that enterprises can easily adapt open source applications to fit their own business or to fulfil niche purposes.
To get some idea of the richness out there, visit Red Hat Exchange (www.redhat.com/rhx) and see for yourself.
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