Business Considers Open Source on Par with Commercial Software

quad4b writes "At the International Conference on COTS-based Software Systems in Spain last week, representatives from organizations such at the Software Engineering Institute (remember the CMM), National Research Council of Canada and the European Software Institute discussed the inclusion of Open Source Software for the first time on the conference agenda. COTS software includes stuff like commercial operating systems, desktop software, and ERP systems among others. The conference examined best practices for integrating these pre-built components in systems development efforts. They conceded that open source software is essentially no different from commercially built software and that both types have their risks in terms of supportability and security. (what opponents of OSS say is its weakness) Interestingly enough, a senior representative of IBM was present and discussed with some of us, over lunch, how IBM is determined to move to an open desktop based on Linux and OpenOffice within about a year."

Comments

That's funny...

[Chordonblue]

I thought I'd read that IBM wasn't interested in OpenOffice - at least for their own use and that they were going down a different path. Go figure. I guess it shows how OOo has really matured lately - 2.0 is indeed really looking good.

At any rate, it's always been my opinion that OSS programs can only get better when people are forced to USE them. When we see IBM forcing their employees to go down that road, I have no doubt that we will see some positive improvements in the way these programs operate.

Years ago, Atari sold a line of personal computers and tried to promote them for business use by porting programs like Visicalc. Later it leaked out that all of Atari's corporate machines were PC's. No doubt this was true. There is a saying for this, it's called, 'Eating your own dog food'.

Do accounting firms recognize Compierre?

[winkydink]

Some countries require that one's acounting system (subset of ERP) to be certified. Has Compierre met this requirement anywhere to date? Do the Big 4 in the US recognize that it has the proper controls?

IBM Open desktop still alive?

[damm0]

This was a rumour started by an internal memo that had no followup. Is IBM really going to push this all the way?

The lines are blurrier, now

[SunFan]

With IBM-backed Linux, OpenSolaris on the way, decent open source J2EE along side commercial J2EE, etc. the lines between suitable commercial software and open source software are somewhat blurry. The bar where someone has to start paying for their software is much higher, now, than it ever used to be, that much is certain.

What are these institutes?

[October_30th]

Software Engineering Institute (remember the CMM), National Research Council of Canada and the European Software Institute

Uh... so, at least for us who are not in the software business but are interested in OSS anyway, it would be nice to know how much influence these institutes actually wield. Are they really "the business" as the subject let's us to believe or something else?

Re:What are these institutes?

[SunFan]

Are they really "the business" as the subject let's us to believe or something else?

At least for the Software Engineering Institute, they are clearly "the business." IIRC, even the government has CMM requirements for some contracts. Management salivates over the SEI daily in many companies, at least until they finally understand the CMM provides no process at all but only recommendations.

Re:What are these institutes?

[djmurdoch]

The National Research Council of Canada is a federal government department, very influential in their own minds (but maybe not in anyone else's).

Can't tell you anything about the others.

Re:What are these institutes?

[Mad Hughagi]

National Research Council of Canada:

NRC is composed of over 20 institutes and national programs, spanning a wide variety of disciplines and offering a broad array of services. We are located in every province in Canada and play a major role in stimulating community-based innovation.

NRC institutes and programs are organized into three (3) key areas:

* Physical Sciences and Engineering
* Life Sciences and Information Technology
* Technology and Industry Support

Re:What are these institutes?

[REggert]

FYI, the Software Engineering Institute is Carnegie Mellon University's Department-of-Defense-sponsored research center whose "core purpose is to help others make measured improvements in their software engineering capabilities and to develop the right software, delivered defect free, on time and on cost, every time."

Re:What are these institutes?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Management salivates over the SEI daily in many companies, at least until they finally understand the CMM provides no process at all but only recommendations.

In most cases, management is forced to be "SEI CMM Level II/III/... compliant" by some customer who wants that.

CMM -- as it should be -- doesn't dictate process. It does say that there is a documented process and how it should behave. This allows each project or group to choose how to be compliant. That takes work.

As management often is looking to tick off a check box, they will do just enough to hit the high points outlined in CMM. That's good, though, since it's usually an improvement over the old methods.

That said, there are a multitude of abuses that occur under the name of SEI CMM so it tends to get a bad rep by association. The ideas, though, are simple and correct in most situations where software will be used over years or decades. It's overkill for small groups that require quick turn-around and where the code is not intended to last forever -- in most cases.

SEI CMM is a tool. Ignore it or use it as is appropriate. Not knowing it at all is a problem in itself.

What is this?

[Otter]

OK, I read the CMU COTS site, and their overview and still have no idea what the term means. (Some consolation is that the submitter himself, who seems to have attended the conference, doesn't seem to understand it either, judging from the assertion that there is "COTS software", not just software that can be implemented in a COTS approach.)

Two things, though:

1) This is hardly a declaration that "Business Considers..."

2) There is a complete confusion of licensing ("open-source") with development practice ("commercially built").

Re:What is this?

[djmurdoch]

Try Googling:

COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf

I think CMM = Capability Maturity Model, but I still have no idea what it means.

ERP = (probably) Enterprise Resource Planning

OSS = Open Source Software (but you probably knew that...)

Re:What is this?

[SunFan]

COTS is the term people use when they say they are saving money by spending millions of dollars on commercial software and spending more millions customizing it for their business.

Re:What is this?

[sconeu]

CMM is in fact the Capability Maturity Model, from the SEI.
Here's more info.

There are 5 levels. It's damn near impossible to get a level 5. IBM Federal Systems (later Loral) was certified Level 5. They did shuttle avionics. When I worked for a major defense contractor, it was a huge success when we were certified Level 3.

Re:What is this?

[irritating environme]

I was in a CMM L3 center in Minneapolis. They got certified at L3 at first review, an impressive accomplishment. My project was the case review for the cert.

Notably, I wrote a lot of code on that project, maybe 25% overall, including much of the hard stuff, and my stuff was pointedly hidden from the reviewers, because I was bypassing paperwork in order to meet our strict deadline. But I eventually backfilled the most important stuff, and I would say that the certification was accurate.

I have to say that any project that wants to work at CMM3 or higher had better have deep pockets. As they say, faster, cheaper, better, pick two (expect one). All of the personnel overhead to do process doubles your headcount, and slows the development time.

CMM's main purpose is to measure the reliablility of the software produced by organizations, so I guess it implicitly selects faster better and chucks cheaper.

IBM switching exclusivly to Linux and open office?

[Prophetic_Truth]

I thought IBM was having trouble doing that?

Ouch

[Anonymous Coward]

Software Engineering Institute (remember the CMM)

Ouch

If there's one thing everyone at SEI is tired of if the CMM thing.

If you've ever met someone from SEI you've probably blurted out "Oh, the CMM people", and got a response "We do more than CMM!". I know I've done it, and got the impression that they're sick and tired of it

Just something to keep in mind if you meet one of them. Of course, I still don't know what else they've done :)

Haleluja ...

[Savage-Rabbit]

how IBM is determined to move to an open desktop based on Linux and OpenOffice within about a year.

It's about time IBM took another whack at you know who .....

Now let's hope this gets upgraded from the lowly status of a mere rumor to the lofty status of a fact and results in a flood of out-of-the-box fully Linux capable of Laptops. :-D

Re:Same risks?

[KillerDeathRobot]

Why? The truthfulness of those statements hasn't changed, nor has the fact that repeating something enough times will make some people believe you.

Not surprising at all

[scenestar]

Ill assume that with "os" they mean free.

It isnt very surprising that a lot of companies are switching from expensive propietary software to freely distributable OS software.

A good example why, are companies that use photoshop for some basic image editing. They are paying huge license fees for software that isn't even used for its full potental.

For them it doesnt matter that GIMP has "less" features, since most of them aren't needed.

Makes sense with ERP

[Anonymous Coward]

Most companies will pay multiples more in support than they ever do licensing run-time and source code. In some cases the out-of-the-box functionality is even less important than the support role since most ERP implementations are customized at some level. In many ERP cases, you are buying into a support relationship to run a critical aspect of your business. The actual software/platform is secondary.

IBM?

[kaleco]

IBM moving to open source desktops within a year?

Obviously they're just angling for a discount from Microsoft ;)

Business Considers Open Source on Par...

[Robber Baron]

What...you mean most open source software is also a buggy resource hog and doesn't live up to the author's exagerated claims?

Re:Business Considers Open Source on Par...

[Ziviyr]

What...you mean most open source software is also a buggy resource hog and doesn't live up to the author's exagerated claims?

And it costs too much! X-P

IBM is a good barometer

[192939495969798999]

IBM has historically been a good barometer for change. Generally, if a company as big as IBM is going for it, a lot of other people will go for it. They adopted MS-DOS for the PC, and look what happened with that!

Re:IBM is a good barometer

[MarkRose]

Apple is a far better company to watch for change. They were the first to manufacture a useful PC (the Apple II). They were the first to manufacture a PC with a GUI (the Mac). They were the first to make PCs with a network connection by default (the Mac). They were the first PC company to move to RISC CPUs (the PowerPC). They were the first to remove the floppy. They were the first PC company to ship and OSS-based OS on all their machines.

While IBM may have more clout in the business world, it's Apple that sets trends. Watch what Apple does.

Re:IBM is a good barometer

[darkstar101]

Actually, the first company to ship a computer with a GUI was Commodore with the Amiga. It was also the first PC with true multitasking, and the first PC with dedicated hardware processors for audio and video. The Mac came shortly after, and magazines at the time rated the Amiga higher then the Mac. Unfortunately Commodore totally sucked at marketing and did not further develop the Amiga much beyond its initial release.

For OSS, COTS = Complete-Off-The-Server

[G4from128k]

It may not be "commercial", but OSS is more complete than its proprietary competition. All jokes about self-documenting code aside, I'd rather have access to the source code than to some vendor's documentation of what they think their code does. Seeing inside the box is useful when an API contains undocumented "features."

Linux Desktops @ IBM ?

[gelfling]

There's certainly a few as noted here before, perhaps 10,000 albeit not well supported and still some birthing pains as well you could imagine with VPNs, Wireless, Lotus Notes, net meeting type apps and internal Web apps and Web Java apps. Just like any other large company with a large suite of internal applications.

Moreover you could guess that taking machines out of service before end of lease, to replace the entire suite of software on them, then send them back, train people and staff a help desk for it is not really a rational goal.

I don't think anyone thinks that migrating everyone or a large chunk of everyone from Win to Linux is going to be any easier than the migration from OS/2 to Win several years ago. And that was quite hard.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your most difficult desktop users, the ones with the most complicated and inflexible requirements are the executives and if they have an app on Windows that absolutely must run the way they want it to run then that is what will happen. Period.

Plus you'd be wasting all the monies you invested in desktop tools for AV and spyware if you suddenly didn't need or couldn't use them anymore.

I think it's bravado to claim that there will be nothing but Linux desktops inside of one year.

it depends on your needs

[m2bord]

sometimes open source software works better than a commercial product...ie...the gimp, apache, open office.

and sometimes non-open software is better...i.e. macromedia's flash.

and until someone creates a non-open or open equivilent.

Re:Summary

[rpozz]

Yes, you got a Troll mod.

I don't think there will, as such be a "year of Linux on the desktop". It will slowly crawl its way in. Firstly, to corporate desktops running nothing other than a word processor and spreadsheet, and then it'll make its way to the 'average' home user who uses it at work.

That's how Microsoft took over, anyway. Would be nice if they got screwed in exactly the same way. However, hopefully it doesn't totally take over, so we're all left with a choice of OS.

IBM is not a barometer...

[zarr]

a barometer doesn't create pressure, it just measures it.

Re:and why not consider open source == cots?

[museumpeace]

In case you are wondering why one would bring DOD software acquisition practices into the comments here:

1. COTS is DOD-speak for "boy are we ever glad we don't have to pay Raytheon's salary scales just to get a damn editor and OS". ...they invented the term.
2. Guess who ulitmately puts up most of the money for and pays the most attention to guidelines promulgated by the SEI?

IBM Has A Lot of Work to Do

[Leghkster]

I'm running a Linux desktop at work (I'm allowed some freedom - nobody else is doing this) and it's mostly IBM tools that force me to include VMWare in the setup.

Particularly annoying examples in our ERP's iSeries (AS/400) environment are the iSeries Navigator tool, and Websphere Dev Studio for iSeries. More and more OS/400 functions are only managable through Nav, and the CODE/400 components of WDSCi make source patching for the ERP a breeze. But the only discussions I've seen of integrating RPG editing into Eclipse (or the WDSC client's version) basically just end with "why bother?" CODE is a stand-alone Windows program is my answer to "why?". If the webfacing tools were all integrated in WDSCi it'd help people undertaking those efforts as well.