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Opening Up for Open Source
jondaw writes "Businesses want to save money and boost IT efficiency. Can open-source software do the trick? Cnet attempts to answer this open ended question and provides a number of good case studies and examples."
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Only if it gets the issue of security right. The thing is, the whole claim that OSS has inherently better security has been exposed as hype for a long time now.
Some OSS projects have excellent security, because the project leaders place sufficient emphasis on it, and the coders code with that emphasis in mind.
Other OSS projects do not have good security, sometimes not even as good as Microsoft and co.
Consider this: I have downloaded patches for more security flaws in Firefox than for IE in recent weeks. Moreover, the IE patches were offered to me via automatic updates within minutes of being available on Windows Update, while the Firefox patches did not show up as automatic updates for several days after they were available from the project web site in some cases. They even had a whole version missed out of the automatic updates, because somehow a release was made that contained serious bugs of its own, and had to be withdrawn.
This is not intended to be a slam against Firefox; it's great software and the project seems to be run well, the vast majority of the time. Rather, this is intended to demonstrate that nothing's perfect.
If commercial closed software can do it, why couldn't open source software?
Well, it's not always just about saving money. There's a lot of open source projects out there that are much less painful to work with.
Not having to worry about CD keys, crazy EULAs, spy/adware, and vendor lock-in are big pluses of most FOSS.
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
> Businesses want to save money and boost IT > efficiency. Can open-source software do the trick? It's clear that it can. But it is of course risky operation (as any other business decision) so the OSS solution must be selected with certain level of knowledge. OSS can boost efficiency but of course not always. So generalizing is not good way to ask this question. What I don't like is the SW business using OSS for faster start up. Simply pretend to be totally FREE - get fast response, fast growing community and then find ways how to generate profit from it. It is really dirty trick. Better to be honest from the very beginning and clearly declare the aims to prevent the community from being surprised.
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
So let's see...
Companies want free software and outsourced labor for $6/hr developers.
So essentially the new American business plan is this:
1) Get free stuff
2) Get free labor
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!
Can open-source software do the trick? Cnet attempts to answer this open ended question
...
Yes.
(Not an open ended question)
Novell and Red Hat are bad businesses to own?
Tell you what. I'll pay for any property or computer equipment they have and assume any debts. (I'll need an equity loan, but there would be no shortage of people ponying up the money.) If what you're implying is true, the owners of Novell and RedHat would gladly accept my offer to get out of their sink hole companies and move onto something that would make them more money. *snicker*
If you want to make money hand over fist, you more than likely need a monopoly. Competitive markets tend to give more reasonable profits. Novell and RedHat have competitive profit margins for such markets. If I were purchasing a product, I'd likely purchase one from a competitive market rather than a monopoly. Vendor lock-in is not a pretty thing to have to deal with.
As for VA Software, they failed because Linux got too popular (so it's being preinstalled by several vendors or consultants) and too easy to install (so sysadmins do it themselves). They didn't try to differentiate themselves from the cheaper alternatives, so they got burned. It has nothing to do with open source. It has everything to do with proper business planning.
Even so, if there is a $15,000 to $30,000 disparity between the cost of a paper MCSE and a *nix admin, that cost is easily recouped by not having to pay for CALs (Windows PLUS Terminal Services PLUS Exchange), SQL Server licenses, plus premiere support contracts for a small handful of servers for just one year.
.015 seconds of clicking submit - and if you didn't find the answer on the first two or three pages, you asked the wrong question ;).
:D
MySQL is free, unless you need to run tasks that shell scripts and crond cannot manage, or unless you want to bundle MySQL with a closed-source product, or unless you want to pay for a support contract and full-color retail box, and even then you don't pay through the nose like you do for SQL Server, or, even worse, Oracle (Oracle's pricing is obscene. Even if you want to just run a development workstation you have to pay per mhz, per cpu, and factor that by the amount of RAM - not on a per-user or per-connection basis, which is more reasonable. I refuse to work with Oracle unless a client absolutely demands it).
Apache? Free.
Linux? Free, unless you want to pay for support from Novell, Redhat, etc. - and even if you want to, unless you're developing a product that speaks to the system at low-level, you will never need the support because usually Yahoo! or Google will return the solution for your problem within an average of
*BSD? Free. Support? Like Linux, support is a Yahoo! or Google query away.
Sendmail? Free. No it doesn't do group scheduling, but true, free Exchange replacements will arrive soon.
Postfix? Free. No it doesn't do group scheduling, but true, free Exchange replacements will arrive soon.
Backup packages? bash, crond, and tar or dar are all free, and what's more, even a live backup of a database or email file/filesystem can be mounted in a pinch in the event that you didn't grab an offline backup or a proper "dump" - and it's less than two minutes' work. Try that with SQL Server or Oracle. Disaster recovery is MUCH easier on *nix than on Windows.
Sure, Windows gives you a slick GUI but automating routine administrative tasks is a royal pain in the ass. You need to hop on one foot and chant to various gods and hope and pray that your vbscript will work (oh, and don't forget to leave the console unlocked so vbscript will be able to access the GUI), and while praying, pray that the applications you need to interact with make all of their controls accessible by VB so you don't have to resort to display-and-font dependent (X,Y) coordinates.
For years M$ has insisted that GUI is the one true way to administer a system but at long last they have finally admitted they're wrong and are introducing bash^H^H^H^HMonad with the server operating system. It'll be 15 years later than everyone said they needed it, but hey, cut them a break. Sometimes it only takes them 8 years to admit they're wrong and bundle a disk defrag program. Eventually Windows will be just as easy to administer as *nix is - remotely, even! Problem though: in addition to having to have antivirus programs, antispyware programs, and kludgy software firewalls installed (in addition to "internet security" software to block vbs, activex, and js exploits), Windows will now be in danger of being rooted and will require rkhunter and chkrootkit to be installed as well. It'll be the most vulnerable OS on the face of the planet at that point.
What sucks about Monad? Microsoft can take open source work and thanks to the BSD license charge money for it all while continuing to spread anti-open source FUD. That's my one problem with the BSD license: Microsoft has on many occasions "borrowed" BSD code for key components of Win9x and NT, but at the same time stated that open source is the root of all evil, that it's unstable code (gee, no wonder their IP stack wasn't all that back then!), and insecure (sure, blame it on *BSD sockets).
But yeah, one day Windows will be as cheap and easy to roll out in a corporate environment as Linux or BSD are.
...I must sell my MSFT & Oracle shares first...
The only reason for OSS unpopularity is the lack of common sense in the management... the management has been brainwashed to think this way : "A corporation is good if it earns lot of cash, if the corp. is good then they must have a good product." Now, let's try this on politics : "a political party is good if it has many members, if the party is good then the ideology also must be good"...
I just wonder why I'm not dressed in a brown uniform and sing "Waterland, waterland..." everytime I'm drunk... or why I don't consult a little red book all the time...
anyway, both cases are called propaganda...