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New OSS Doomed In Enterprise?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the don't-kill-the-penguin dept.

Rob wrote to mention a Computer Business Review Online article which posits that immature open source software is doomed in an enterprise environment nowadays. From the article: "Open-source startups and relative newcomers must target a new breed of CIOs, which Graf dubs chief process innovation officers. Rather than old-school CIOs who focus on a company's data management, these guys design processes with the company's network. "If you want to become strategic to the company, you need to deal with business processors. 'The key question for open source is, Which open source technologies are mature enough to survive the consolidation that's coming?' Graf said. 'Linux? Definitely. Eclipse? Definitely. Mozilla? Most likely.'"

3 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Re:OSS will almost always be doomed in Enterprise. by inter+alias · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Read the MS EULA.. They can't be held accountable for anything.

    What they offer is paid support. 3rd party paid support is often availible for OSS, but some exec's probably feel it need to come directly from the maker.

  2. SAP says that immature open source software... by s0l3d4d · · Score: 5, Insightful

    relatively immature open source software has little chance of surviving in the enterprise, said an SAP AG executive during a speech at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.

    D'oh? News value? 1) immature software has never had good survival rates in the enterprise environment and 2) SAP probably wants to sell SAP software, so even if there was an open source, MATURE application, that would be enterprise strength, to be used where SAP is used, I don't somehow think that SAP would suggest anyone to use that.

  3. Doomed I tell you, Doooomed by MarkusQ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a crock. As others have pointed out already, immature software is unlikely to be used in an enterprise environment (unless it was developed in house) regardless of the license. But wait, there's more. I happen to have a number of immature open source projects of my own at the moment, and I don't give a flying fig if they "make it" in an enterprise environment.

    Why? Because unlike Microsoft, I don't expect any revenue from them and thus won't be disappointed if I don't get any. I wrote them because I needed them and open sourced them because I wanted a few more eyeballs on them. But even if no one else ever even downloads them, I'm not <voice='spooky'> Dooomed </voice> because I'm not selling them in the first place. For the vast majority of open source projects, saying that they won't make it in "the Enterprise" is about as relevant as saying that cows will never use the iPod.

    --MarkusQ