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Looking Back at Open Source in 2005
bhmit1 writes "BusinessWeek is reporting on the open source progress in 2005. Their conclusion: "in 2005, the software movement finally gained traction in Corporate America and saw a new influx of VC cash." Has the shift in corporate america really occurred or are activities like the profitability of Red Hat signalling that the CEO's are still holding on to the old way of business?"
Its a pain that I cannot recommend Linux as an operating system into many of our customers corporate environments simply because the vendor support is still not there. Here is a classic example of issues that I have faced with Linux over the last year. Recommending a customer to go with Linux would have required them to use GFS to keep it supported by Redhat, however there is no Veritas or Legato backup agent for GFS at this point in time which means they would have had issues backing up the file systems or having a system that would have been completely un supported. So we ended up recommending Solaris 10 with Veritas Cluster Server which we knew we could backup using the Legato or Veritas backup software and remain fully supported. The real issue is not that we cant support the product in house but its who does management call when things break which from my experience does not happen too often in a well designed and implemented solution. For linux to really be accepted on a broad scale enterprise offering it must have
- Fully supported file systems with fully supported backup agents for each system.
- Vender interoperability. Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 and Enterprise Linux 4. Some commercial applications will not work properly on 4 but will on 3 because of the compiler/libraries they had used to build the code.
As an open source advocate and someone who believes in the principals of open source things have come a very long way over the last year, but the real linch pins still remain and will remain for some time.
But what about new stuff? Will someone with a really innovative idea open source it from the beginning? And even worse: will we notice?
I do admit that open source projects have features that commercial projects never bothered to implement (image dumps from video files in VideoLan comes to mind) but I struggle to find something completely new.
Perhaps a more efficient means would be for the grandparent to fuck a select few 'root nodes' in the ass. At which point, these recipients, still dribbling with gelatinous manslop, can spread out further and fuck others in the ass on the grandparents behalf. The new receivers will then fuck others, also in the ass. (I believe the grandparent makes that clear). In essence we have the beginnings of a global pyramid of spontaneous homosexuality, with our friend the grandparent as the instigator of this sodomite orgy.
Embrace this Open Source Opportunity.
(It makes a fuckload more sense than free iPods!)
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
One of the greatest events around open source in 2005 was for me the penguin-hack of a microsoft lobbyevent in the parliament of berlin. very funny and with lots of pictures: Microsoft in Parliament.
I think it was a very good year for Open Source software.
In 2005, my work projects benefited highly from open source libraries. My testing software would have been very time-consuming to write without open source software. In general, it has saved me quite a bit of time and aggravation.
In addition, each time I proposed open source as a means of supplying something I needed to use, I didn't need to justify it to the project management types - they understand the power and the value now...
Perhaps a sea change is occurring that makes it a little more understandable (to corporate types) that the volunteer work of a few benefits the many.
A big thanks to those who have burned the midnight oil just to provide software for the rest of the world!
A Passionate Independent Musician
Red Hat perhaps shows that you can make money from Opensource software. IBM already knows this. You give the software away for free. Then charge them their first born for support. Business never changes. Buy cheap sell dear. Nothing is cheaper then opensource, and nothing is more expensive then IBM tech support. Well MS support if you think downtime expenses should be charged to support costs.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What the hell does this mean? Are you saying the "new" way of doing business means not achieving profitability?
It means that corporate america seems to be saying "open source is great, where do we buy it" instead of considering how to adjust their business to better utilize OSS. They seem to be jumping on the latest buzzword or trend without really understanding the value. And the boom of Red Hat seems to be indicating that people are buying OSS rather than buying into the OSS concept. Phrasing it to avoid "shouldn't Red Hat want to make a profit" confusion would have taken a few more brain cells working than I had before the morning sugar rush, sorry.
We have not, as you said, reached that point yet. I work for a "smaller" organization, and we have a terrible time finding support for OSS applications, even when we pay for it. No one local (and we're in a city of 1,000,000+) has even as much expertise as we do, and it's terribly frustrating to call someone for support and find out that their knowledge ends about the same time yours does.
The larger, national, support providers are our only option. Even were there local support providers, I do not necessary agree that would be a per se better solution. We use legal help from all over the country, depending on what we need and who's best for the job. Our accounting is done in house and locally, but many businesses of even small-medium size are using national accounting firms. It's a matter of efficiency and accountability -- those national firms can provide the services we need as cheaply / quickly / effectively as possible. They also are large enough that if there is a problem, they can bring extensive additional resources to bear.
There's further a generalized business efficiency argument in favor of using a specialized outside source: we should do our business, and hire someone else whose expert at providing the support. There's an overhead associated with having an IT department who can support any and all applications. If the business uses a relatively small number of applications, the benefit of a knowledgeable IT department is overwhealmingly positive. If, however, the business uses a wide variety of applications, it seems better for the IT department and the business that IT support the core, and an outside support group handles the esoteric, but important, 95% of the applications that get used only 5% of the time.
"Office suites are a bad idea. MS Office is proof of that; it's the best product in its category, but it still really really sucks."
I hate comparisons like this. They are so useless. It's like saying the Babylonians were the best mathematicians in their day, but they were really, really stupid.
Well, not really. It's like saying "Yes, this dual Gefore 7800 GTX 512 SLI overclocked and watercooled is the fastest you can get, but you still can't get photorealistic renders in real-time and that really really sucks."
In marketing they'd call that an unfulfilled desire, a "market pull" (as opposed to creating a new desire people didn't know they had until they saw your product). Saying "I think it could be done much better than what is the current state of the art" is not useless. The opposite would be "This software already does everything I need in an excellent way." Big difference.
Then again, it doesn't really help unless someone can find a better way. Customer wishes often go from unrealistic (really obscure features) to egosentric (I want it custom-tailored to fit me, despite that making it worse for all others) to psychic (I expect this program to know what I'm trying to do, even if I'm completely inept at describing that to the program).
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It saw Microsoft's bloated slothful SBS replaced in it's thousands by swift lean *nix and bsd boxen, which are easy to administer, and easy to update.
Not one of our clients are going to "upgrade" to another Microsoft server platform. Not one. After years of exploits, lock in, and "useless feature which leads to a format", even the most dedicated Microsoft fans are jaded.
It saw USB support on all major distro's, plaug in a camera, and be greeted by an import photo wizard.
Plug in an external drive, and start filling it up. Plug in almost anything USB and just start using it. Thanks kernal gurus, you just made the garden variety user want to use Linux.
Happy new year to Apache, QMail, Sendmail, Bind, DJBDNS, Xorg, Firefox, and Bram Cohen.
All the best for the next year!!
Absolutely true. The last place I worked at was willing to buy products at 10x the price, so long as they had garunteed vendor support. Never underestimate how valuable a support contract is when your last parity drive has just failed on your raid and you have no spares left in the building.
For the companies I've worked for I've been the client side coordinator of hundreds of different software support contracts of one sort or another, plus a few hardware support contracts. I've been on the vendor side of a few software support contracts also.
It's been my consistent real world experience that while hardware support contracts can be worthwhile in mission critical environments, annual software support contracts are an almost complete waste of time and money. Really. They provide no real world guarantees, nothing. I don't care how the contract is written, it's just too easy for the vendor to obey the letter but not the spirit of the contract.
For software you're much better off getting third party support on an hourly basis. Much cheaper, faster, more efficient and objective, even if you have to fly them in and pay extortionate rates. They also think more laterally and can solve problems with third party solutions more readily.
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Keep your options open!