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...'"

Comments

OSS

[Savage-Rabbit]

The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys. The thing I like the most about OSS is that I have everything at my fingertips with OSS, they only delay is the time it takes to download stuff and install it. When you are workign with proprietary tools it's the same, you do have everything at your fingertips, except you also have to wait for the license costs to be approved by the bean-counters. Somehow I feel that I get things done quicker with OSS because I can bypass a whole layer of corporate bureaucracy. On the other hand quality of OSS software can be low, documentation often sucks and user friendliness is also an issue although with some proprietary stuff such as certain Oracle products for example user friendliness is nothing to cheer about either and I have seen proprietary software that made me wonder where people get the nerve to demand money for such crap.

Re:OSS

[Master of Transhuman]

"(if OSS hoses your network, who you going to sue?"

Bullshit.

Marcus Ranum annihilated this argument in his "Stupid About Software" rant.

Of course, you're right that management ACTS that way - but it's all CYA. Nobody ever sues a software company for non-performance of the software. They just pour more good money after bad trying to make it work - until they either get something half-assed working or they abandon the project and start all over again with some other vendor.

Business Case? How about home case?

[Technician]

The primary benefits the piece uses to argue in favor of OSS include no licensing fees, and no license keys.

When WGA started up, I started looking at Linux again. Business has some incentive. So does home users. We have 3 machines running Ubuntu now. We have one Windows ME laptop and one MS XP Home machine. The XP machine will be the last to migrate. It's just waiting on a port of Turbo Tax. There is no plans at this time for Vista due to the Anti-Piracy effort gone overboard. I don't buy booby-trapped software. I expect software to just work without complications. Vista is loaded with complications.

Re:Business Case? How about home case?

[Technician]

It is more noticable in XP then in Vista. It seems like every 2 weeks I am installing WGA, in Vista it must be happening in the background because I havent noticed anything yet.

In XP it is a add on patch. In Vista, it's built in on the ground floor. Do a google search for Vista false positive. Pick any item on the first google page. They all relate to WGA problems on Vista.

Re:Business Case? How about home case?

[Technician]

And has doing all of what you described been worth saving $200?

Far from it. On the other side. A copy of XP.. good for one install. A copy of MS Office.. good for one install. We work on desktop machines once in a while, but are road warriers. Not buying 2 extra copies of XP and not buying 3 upgrades of MS office twice on 2 machines from 97 to 2000 to 2003.. There is more.. Not updating the AV for the 3 machines and not buying Photoshop Elements on at least one machine. I'll leave it up to you to figure the cost of 3 copies of MS office (any version) 3000, 3 copies of retail XP with or without new hardware, and at least 1 copy of Photoshop Elements, and AV software for 3 machines.

The education alone on learning to install, service, and configure Linux has been worth the $200 alone. The first install was to learn about it. The second and 3rd install was for the apps that came with it that work and are not limited function demos. I didn't even need Roxio or Easy CD Creator to burn the next ISO. Oops, forgot to include that in the savings.

Same here, and more...

[mangu]

When you are working with proprietary tools it's the same, you do have everything at your fingertips, except you also have to wait for the license costs to be approved by the bean-counters

This is one of the two main points for OSS that I have experienced. The second important point is that with OSS your system is able to survive the vendor. Where I work we have a 400000 lines VAX-FORTRAN software that we are struggling to migrate. Although we do have the Fortran source code, migrating it to any other Fortran is very costly, we have the choice of doing it ourselves or pay about $250k to outsource the job.

I think our experience shows the importance of going all the way in OSS, the operating system, utilities, compilers, etc are just as important as the applications. That's why we are migrating our system to g77 on Linux, instead of using one of the several commercial Fortran compilers whose vendors claim VAX compatibility.

Re:The FSF and Activists may come knocking

[tezza]

Seeing as some kind soul modded my original post as Flamebait, I'll take another post to say I probably wrongly singled out the EFF, whereas I probably meant the FSF.

In this thread you can see an employee[1] of FSF (novalis atsign fsf.org) asking for submissions about the Linksys software. This is not out of simple interest in what is running. It so that they can build a case to ask Linksys to prove they have complied with the various licensing terms of the open source software incorporated in their device.

For the other people out there who might mod this down, here is a more comprehensive list:

* Theo de Raadt On Firmware Activism - requiring firms to open linked code

* And the whole SveaSoft debacle - Is Sveasoft Violating the GPL? - Please note this entailed multi-party activism with external people deciding to leak SveaSofts code

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1 - someone claiming to be at least

Re:My experience

[przemekklosowski]

The parent article is wrong on several levels, and frankly the mix of arrogance and ignorance suggests a troll job. My Bait-O-Meter is pegged on red, but what the heck, in the interest of keeping the record straight, here are some corrections:

Although we met several technical challenges along the way (specifically, Linux's lack of Token Ring support and the fact that we were unable to defrag its ext2 file system), Linux has Token Ring support for at least six years now (http://www.linuxtr.net/). Similarly, ext2 filesystems do not need to be defragged, normally, and even if the poster hit some specific usage patterns that resulted in problems attributable to ext2, making kernel mods to ext2 would be the wrong thing for a consultant to propose. Finally, even if it miraculously weren't so (e.g. because the poster brilliantly spotted a simple fix to ext2 that everyone else missed), the idea to keep this fix private happens to be misguided on both technical and moral grounds, even if GPL wasn't an issue. This is so, because the filesystem code is a critical infrastructure, and due diligence requires it to be carefully rewieved. Not publishing it would prevent a peer review by the people who know the area much better than the poster, even if we assume that he is competent in fact.

GPL, or the Gnu Protective License. Nuff said, after a legal consultation they still have no clue even to the proper name of the GPL. I guess failing on the preliminaries makes further progress difficult...

Furthermore, after reviewing this GPL our lawyers advised us that any products compiled with GPL'ed tools - such as gcc - would also have to its source code released. [...] Although we had planned for no one outside of this company to ever use, let alone see the source code, we were now put in a difficult position. We could either give away our hard work, or come up with another solution. Yes, they got the meaning of the license completely wrong, too. It is widely known that a) compiling code with gcc does not require making the source available, and b) GPL requires making the source available only if the binary is distributed to the public.

Although it was tought to do, there really was no option: We had to rewrite the code, from scratch, for Windows 2000. So, they wrote TR and ext2 for Windows (snicker).

I may reconsider if Linux switches its license to something a little more fair, such as Microsoft's "Shared Source". Until then its attempts to socialize the software market will insure it remains only a bit player. 'Shared Source' essentially means that you can peek at MS code, but it doesn't mean that you can go ahead and deploy modifications. More importantly, most Intellectual Property rights are retained by Microsoft, How can anyone complain about IP loss in GPL and at the same time propose Shared Source, is a mystery. Oh, but it is a troll. OK then.