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The Business Case for Open Source Software
An anonymous reader writes "An InfoWorld blog entry makes a business case for open source software, and attempts to explain the business benefits of OSS to management and business owners. The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys. The article also argues that OSS results in freedom from 'ownership' by software vendors. 'Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit. The BSA even takes out advertisements on Google search pages for and up to $200,000 reward a disgruntled ex-employee can receive for reporting your company to the BSA! That's quite a powerful motivator...'"
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
'Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit.'
You may however have the EFF or activists wanting to inspect your code.
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"Never again will you fear the BSA (Business Software Alliance) knocking on your door wanting to perform a software audit."
It's funny, but when *I* say "Nice business, be a shame to see it audited..." people start talking about calling the cops if I don't leave immediately.
Seriously though, FUD is FUD whoever it comes from; just because they do it doesn't mean it's ok for us to do it too.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's quite different over here. It's not just a question of experimenting with OSS, it's a combination of seeing the job as deciding between presentations from different vendors and being averse to taking personal risks.
As I mentioned, it seems like people have stopped doing their own research and now mainly choose between different schpiels from different vendors. Vendor 1 selling you something for 100,000 dollars, and vendor 2 selling it to you for 50,000? Clearly if you go with vendor 2, you've saved the company 50,000 dollars a year. No need to point out vendor 3, who doesn't have a substantial sales team but who sells something identical for 5,000 dollars per year, or an OSS solution which might need 1,000 dollars per year worth of tweaks. Or maybe it makes sense for you to write your own. We generally have a 2-vendor solution, and nobody can fault you for choosing the better of the two, right?
The risk-aversion deepens. In corporate US if you create a product that everyone else is making, your job is reasonably safe even if it tanks. And, in fact, simply because everyone else is making it, it's likely to tank. On the other hand, if you create something original (i.e. something with an open market) and it tanks, it's more likely that your career will bear the brunt of that mistake. OSS is currently viewed a lot like that. Taking risks is largely regarded as a negative, and certainly regarded as a dangerous career move.
One does not experiment with OSS, because one does not experiment. One either knows for sure, or one contracts a vendor who will bear the brunt of the responsibility when things might go wrong.
The ______ Agenda
Where I work we have a 400000 lines VAX-FORTRAN software that we are struggling to migrate.
Yeah. And, I bet that when those 400,000 lines of code were written, the idea of DEC folding was about as plausible as the idea of Microsoft folding.
Which would be fine. But most people's definition of "stealing" does not include "paying for it, then mislaying the receipts".
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
On the other hand quality of OSS software can be low, documentation often sucks and user friendliness...
Yeah and the documentation and user friendliness of closed source code often sucks too. Just because the software is open source is not some magical bullet. Gee the boss wanted a database but I downloaded a Web browser, but it's open source so that's okay right? It's not like you still don't have to perform due diligence when choosing software and evaluate every package based upon its merits and risks and your use cases. It is just that you have to recognize that open source software is an option for many use cases and often a very good one. The real issue is so many morons who can't understand that there is a different business model and you don't have to buy everything in order to use it.
Another problem I foresee for OSS software is that it may tend to mutate over time without strict controls or much in the way of accountability.
With open source software you have the code and can always compile it the way it used to be or hire someone to. You can hire someone to do a fork if you need to. With closed source software you just have to go along with whatever the vendor wants to do and if they don't want to keep offering an old version just for you or make some change you need you're screwed. Open source wins in this category and arguments that it doesn't seem absurd to me.
What works today may not work tomorrow and when things in your corporation start breaking whose throat are you going to choke?
Choke? When MS decides it no longer wants to support a given language or feature in the software you have whose throat are you going to choke? It makes no difference if you are using software from an organization, or paying from support from a given commercial entity or paying outright for it, except with open source you have a few more options. This situation is not different. If a product stops supporting what you need and is moving the wrong way, open or closed you look at other options and offerings. With open source you have the added option of paying some random contractor to keep the software you have running the way you want.
With MS products the same defects are there (though less so as it turns out (predictably)), but in their case at least we know who to blame and can expect the product to be fixed. With OSS I see no way to assure that.
With MS software you can report bugs and they may or may not be ignored. If you pay for support, they are less likely to be ignored. This is in no way different from open source software, except they tend to be better about fixing bugs in general and in a worst case scenario I can take bids from different people to solve the problem. I have several outstanding bugs with Adobe and they've been in the last three revisions of one of their products on every platform they support. When you do something the application crashes. My company spends significant money working around that flaw. The fact that they are closed source is helping us how? Unless we offer them significant money, they don't care. The only real difference is if it was an open source product, we could have an engineer internally fix it or we would have multiple choices of hiring someone else to fix it, thus costing us less.
The solution to the competitive model of OSS for the Big Vendors is very simple.
I think you're failing to understand the real wins of open source software.
EULAs and license numbers are not the biggest differentiators between OSS and closed source commercial software. OSS is fundamentally a more efficient model for users for software. With closed source software you're always somewhat locked into one vendor, even if it is only being locked into one vendor for improvements. With OSS you always can take competitive bids, thus getting better prices. With closed source software the vendor charges what they think will maxi
Or simply post a bug report, or correspond with the programmers to resolve the problem. This is definitely not something you can do with Microsoft.
With OSS you at least know who helped build the product. You have names, contact info, ways to communicate with the movers and shakers. With closed source you usually never get anywhere near a programmer.