Open Source Programming Tools On the Rise

snydeq writes "Peter Wayner takes a look at several open source development projects making waves in the enterprise. From Git to Hadoop to build management tools, 'even in the deepest corners of proprietary stacks, open source tools can be found, often dominating. The reason is clear: Open source licenses are designed to allow users to revise, fix, and extend their code. The barber or cop may not be familiar enough with code to contribute, but programmers sure know how to fiddle with their tools. The result is a fertile ecology of ideas and source code, fed by the enthusiasm of application developers who know how to "scratch an itch."'"

Comments

Really?

[MrEricSir]

Here is a very unscientific survey of worthwhile open source tools that have caught our eye.

I guess CVS, Firefox, Linux, GNU Make, etc. didn't catch your eye years ago?

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU Make has certainly earned its place among the annals of history, but it's only had four minor releases in the past decade.

So?

If there isn't any bugs that needs to be fixed and no extra features to add, why would you need a new release?

Make 3.83 - Changelog:
* Updated year in copyright string.
* Updated version number.

Is that what you want?

More economic than ideologic

[Anonymous Coward]

We use open source in business because it does the job and doesn't require a PO and all the hassle that goes along with that process.

Open? Or free (as in beer)?

[Chuck_McDevitt]

I'll bet that lots of enterprise use of Open Source tools is due to the price tag, not the ability to fiddle with the source code.

Re:Open? Or free (as in beer)?

[clang_jangle]

While that's almost certainly true, it really doesn't matter at all. Everyone benefits from wider deployment of FOSS, whether or not they're using it "for the right reasons".

Re:Easy

[clang_jangle]

I know that words are mostly defined by popular usage, but it annoys me that people say "the cloud" when all they really mean is "online". "The cloud" was supposed to be about distributed computing or using online computing resources from your choice of locations/devices. We're not seeing much of that, but we sure are aiding and abetting the marketing tards who keep saying "cloud, cloud" until it actually means nothing at all.

Re:Open? Or free (as in beer)?

[Jaime2]

I'm not so sure.

I work for a huge company. The corporate standard for software development is Java, so you'd think there would have a bunch of open source tools in the processes. Instead, they are heavily into the Rational tools suite and run apps on WebSphere. On the other hand, my division writes software on .Net, but we use SubVersion, NAnt, NUnit, and Wix. Our tool set is frowned upon precisely because it's free. The enterprise attitude seems to be "if it doesn't cost an-arm-and-a-leg and doesn't come with an 800 support number, it can't be any good".

Re:Open? Or free (as in beer)?

[QilessQi]

Then your enterprise attitude is woefully wrong.

The reason is clear but it isnot the one mentioned

[Quantum_Infinity]

I highly doubt that open source tools are used because they allow themselves to be modified. What percentage of people actually look into the code and modify them? The main reason is that most open source tools are free and have absolutely zero delay in being available. Download, install and code away! In most cases, you don't even have to install, just unzip and you are good to go.

Craft Guild

[oldhack]

Most of us pay our bills building god-awful websites and writing financial/accounting stuff. It is, intellectually, drudgery. Those of us in better situations, and others who manage to find energy, write tools to make the drudgery bit more palatable.

It's a labor of love.

Or sadism in Larry Wall's case.

Virtualization has changed the game for me

[maxm]

These days you don't have to choose. I run Win 7 on my machine and a virtualbox Ubuntu on that. So I develop in Ubuntu, and any kind of multimedia stuff is handled in Windows.

The great thing about development on Unix is that it is all just there. apt-get install xxx and you are ready to go. Versions are automatically upgraded. If you prefer working in a windows environment for some part of your project, you can easily do it by sharing drives and networking.

Re:Open? Or free (as in beer)?

[CalcuttaWala]

The ability to buy a product through a purchase order and have access to customer support is sometimes very important to large corporations. I had once used a legitimately downloaded PGP encryption product as key component of a complex Cash Management application in a global multinational bank but the biggest challenge in getting it accepted as a part of the solution was the lack of a purchase order. I remember the IT Head of the bank almost pleading with me to get a commercial product but because PGP had already been integrated with the system, the difficulty of a change was immense. I believe that the bank finally got someone do download PGP and sell it to the bank for $10 through an invoice before the row was settled !!

Free, widespread and easy to trial

[Aceticon]

FOSS tools are widelly use in enterprises because of three reasons:

1. They're free: no need to justify a budget for them and the cost of failure (i.e. if it doesn't work for the company's needs) is low (all you loose is time)
2. They're used in many places: so your new developers often already know the tools in question because they used them somewhere else. New developers are much less likelly to be familiar with specific third party tools since they probably haven't used them in a previous job or at home.
3. Trying them out is easy: it's usually just a question of downloading them, installing them and trying them. FOSS tools usually come with simple and/or well known licenses (GNU, Apache) which probably have already been checked by the company's legal team for another tool. Compare this with tools from 3rd party vendors which often require getting in contact with the vendor in question to arrange a trial (if at all possible) and include a proprietary license, different from everybody else's.