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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.
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
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.