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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."
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'.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
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?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
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.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
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?
The owls are not what they seem
I thought IBM was having trouble doing that?
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
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
how IBM is determined to move to an open desktop based on Linux and OpenOffice within about a year.
.....
:-D
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.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Why? The truthfulness of those statements hasn't changed, nor has the fact that repeating something enough times will make some people believe you.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
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.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
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...)
Obviously they're just angling for a discount from Microsoft ;)
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
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.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
What...you mean most open source software is also a buggy resource hog and doesn't live up to the author's exagerated claims?
You're using her as bait, Master!
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!
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