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How Big US Firms Use Open Source Software
Diomidis Spinellis writes "We hear a lot about the adoption of open source software, but when I was asked to provide hard evidence there was little I could find. In a recent article we tried to fill this gap by examining the type of software the U.S. Fortune 1000 companies use in their web-facing operations. Our study shows that the adoption of OSS in large U.S. companies is significant and is increasing over time through a low-churn transition, advancing from applications to platforms, and influenced by network effects. The adoption is likelier in larger organizations and is associated with IT and knowledge-intensive work, operating efficiencies, and less productive employees. Yet, the results were not what I was expecting."
Part of their results are based on what they host their company websites on. I don't know about the top 1000. But when I worked at an ISP, several large clients that colo-ed several racks of equipment from us hosted their website on our hosted servers. If a company website doesn't do anything interactive besides send an email to someone in sales or marketing then thats probably what said company does.
Also, its really more interesting what the internal systems in a corporation are running, not the company website, which is usually not handled by IT.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Most companies are afraid to derive products from projects with GPL license, in fear that they will have to share all their code (even unrelated) with customers, and that exact obligation from license is unclear, and might change in court.
Now, article seems to be more about using SW tools developed with GPL license; not developing their own products from GPL components. That is lesser issue.
lke svn, twiki, mysql, memcached, boost, postgreql, hudson -and we're mostly a windows shop -although we are trying to move some of our heavier workloads to Linux.
-I'm just sayin'
I think this is the best way to convert people to OSS. Start slowly by showing them how can run free, non-Microsoft, non-Apple software. Then after a year or two, transition them to Linux.
And even if they never abandon Windows or MacOS, they're still hurting those corporations by not buying their major products, and using free altenatives instead.
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We don't often use open source products directly, instead we use tools supported by 3rd parties that are built on them...
For example:
Firewalls are based on BSD but since BSD licensing allows it they are closed systems forked form BSD a long time ago.
Our firewall management platform runs on Linux and contains many open source packages, you even have the option of running the management tool on your own linux but we don't, we purchased a rack-able appliance that is maintained as a whole. We get "releases" that update the whole app, server services and kernel as a working supported package..
Our ANTI spam package runs on linux and is based on spam assassin at the lowest level, however again, we purchase a racked supported appliance that gets frequent updates so we don't waste time trying to piece together all the little things.
Hell even our desk phones run linux under neath but do I care? no I wan a phone that just works, so I never touch the open source part..
If you are doing a survey on open source and you are looking at desktop apps and web-servers in an Enterprise, you are missing the open source software right under your nose.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
This part surprised me, til I read this:
"Open source software is often less polished than its proprietary alternatives; version proliferation and poor usability are two often-reported problems [Nichols and Twidale, 2003,Krishnamurthy, 2005,Viorres et al., 2007]. Highly-paid employees, like knowledge workers, may argue that the fit of the OSS [Thompson et al., 1991], the service quality it offers [DeLone and McLean, 2003], or the perceived behavioral control they have over it [Ajzen, 1991] is worse than that of its proprietary alternative. The key factors for resisting such change can be classified into people-oriented, system-oriented, and interaction theories [Jiang et al., 2000]. As the cost of the software used by highly productive workers forms a small percentage of their total employment cost and the software's quality reflects a lot on their productivity, spending on industry-standard proprietary software may be a rational decision. Consequently, we could expect that the relative advantage of OSS viewed as an innovation [Moore and Benbasat, 1991,Rogers, 2003] will be marginal. As an example, traders with seven figure incomes are unlikely to skimp on the operating system running on their PCs.
--> "Conversely, in Fortune 1000 companies with numerous but less productive employees adoption of cheaper though less polished OSS can offer significant cost advantages, and therefore management can easier mandate its use. For instance, we can easily imagine the cost savings associated with thousands of service desks running Linux and the Thunderbird mail client."
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
How is this surprising? Highly paid knowledge workers are under heavy demand to perform. Their entire job can be measured in hours of "non-productive" time, which would include learning a new workflow process (Linux desktop and software) so they can do the job that they are already doing quite well. If some tool written under windows is the tool they need, then they get that tool on the latest version. Not giving it to them means the inflow of money stops.
Same can't be said for most of the other staff. Linux is fantastic for call centers, admin assistants, and the like. Most of their work can be done through a browser. A desktop admin can remotely lock down their machines, choose which options of which applications to enable remotely, push and roll back software updates- all with free tools. It cuts down on the amount of staff needed to keep those parts of a company running without much pushback. No more need for licensed backup, anti-virus, update, software push, or upgrade software, and all of the admin headaches that come along with that.
Most trading companies have huge numbers of Linux servers feeding data to high end trader desktops. I suspect that many of the quants have both Linux systems for work, and Windows for bureaucracy.(email, expenses, etc.). Regular institutional traders use tons of open source software, but likely don't realize it. Sure, the desktop OS is likely Windows, the office suite is likely MS Office, but the browser is Chrome/Firefox. There is also all the stuff on the back end. If the database isn't open source, it is still more likely to be running on Linux than Windows (Db2 and Oracle), with the exception of MSSQL. Web servers, internal and external are more likely to be Nginex or Apache than IIS or other proprietary offerings. Commercial application servers have a small market share compared to open source ones. I can go on, but open source software is already heavily adopted by most large corporations. You won't see it on the desktop extensively, but it is there.
As an example, traders with seven figure incomes are unlikely to skimp on the operating system running on their PCs.
Traders with seven figure incomes don't select the OS and apps running on their desktop. That's what the IT department is for. And when selecting a system for their seven figure income trader, cost is much less of an issue than for the call center employee. Just buy them the newest, shiniest rig at the PC shop. And if it quits, just buy a brand new one and scrap last year's model. At call centers, someone is counting every nickel.
One more point: Some of those citations are pretty old (1991). Things have changed since then. Principally, the visibility of open source. In 1991, the face of OSS was RMS. Now its Google.
Have gnu, will travel.
False. First I was asking directly about the reports and why they are cited.
Second, open source has a huge advantage of making people more efficient. Lets take a frim I have been consulting with as an example:
First meeting of the day was about licensing. We had 10 people in a room to discuss what licenses are in use, which ones are going away, and what we need to plan to spend next year. Many other people spent the last week gathering information, creating charts, and writing reports for this meeting. Lost productivity: about 120 hours * 15 people. Next, we worked on trying to mitigate upgrades that two vendors are requiring, leaving them with an unusable system, 4 people assigned full time for the last year. Add in the fact that the closed source vendor has a bug in their software, and our million dollar support contract doesnt cover vendor bugs if they are to fixed in some upcoming version, the ticket is closed and we can suck it. They cant go anywhere else easily, they are locked in nice and tight, the data cant get out and they have convinced management that training is always more costly then change. Next we review how two other offices have reduced thier support labor from 20 people / 200 desks down to 2 per 500 desks using Linux thin clients and open source apps. The users are more productive as the apps are tailored to their workflow, not some clump of apps slapped onto Windows like their counterparts.
So closed source apps and proprietary data formats are the big labor wasters.
We all know that is what it is like in real life. The MBA/PHP view of the world is not tainted by contact with reality
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You have a point here. And you haven't mentioned the huge cost associated with procurement processes for proprietary software, especially in the public sector. These can drag on for months. In contrast, acquiring an open-source product is often simply a matter of a one-click download. Even if the organization's legal has trouble understanding open source licenses, this is a hurdle you have to overcome just once.