Gus Robertson, vice president of Red Hat Asia-Pacific said open source has helped lower the cost of IT but there are far more strategic reasons for choosing open-source software over proprietary competitors. However, Dion Wiggins, research director and vice president of Gartner in Hong Kong, advised businesses against having a strategy specifically for open source.
Evaluate open source as software? Hard to believe someone actually had to give that advice.
Open source has proven itsself to be a superior software development model which flips common ideology on it’s head. Over time, open source improves at an exponential rate. Take a look at Linux now versus Linux 8 years ago…
Open source isn’t always the best choice (look at OSS tax software) but is often “good enough” for most people. The best way to determine if OSS is right is by evaluting your business needs versus the quality / featureset of the software. A good start would be to score it using:
http://www.navicasoft.com/pages/osmm.htm
In time, OSS will just about always win, that doesn’t mean it’s the best fit in every situation.
Open source has proven itsself to be a superior software development model which flips common ideology on it’s head.
Um, no. Despite claims to the contrary, in general, open source projects are no less likely to fail, no less buggy, and no more usable that closed source projects.
More than that, open source has failed to be the basis of innovation. Nearly ever successful open source project is merely an imitation of a previously successful closed source system.
Over time, open source improves at an exponential rate.
Unfortunately, the exponent is very close to 1. And, given the recent regressions in 2.6 kernels, is sometimes less than 1.
Take a look at Linux now versus Linux 8 years ago…
8 years ago: poor imitation of Unix.
now: poor imitation of Windows.
More than that, open source has failed to be the basis of innovation. Nearly ever successful open source project is merely an imitation of a previously successful closed source system.
Like the internet you mean? You get a lot of this trash talking of open source innovation which is always happening. You can’t have such a varied eco-system without any innovation occuring. That’s as stupid as saying no innovation comes from closed source software.
I’ve seen plenty of things in open source projects that later appear in closed source ones. There tend to be lots of smaller innovations that enable flexibility rather than big ones. Take Nautilus, some of the things I’d not seen in closed source apps before they appeared there:
image previews for loads of document types (i.e. seeing the actual text within text documents in the icon)
emblems for documents/folders
notes on documents/folders
renaming highlights the filename but not the extension (now picked up by Vista and OSX)
I sure some of these have appeared elsewhere at some point, but that’s not the point. If things like this appear in closed source software they’re claimed as innovation, rather than just being natural developments based on what has gone before.
There’s plenty of other innovative applications, things like Tomboy, Muine’s interface is so clean even iTunes looks like a monstrosity in comparison. Where’s the closed source version of Tomboy? Beagle was there with its clean interface before other search technology was demonstrated. Those are some examples I can think of at the top of my head, but I’ve seen lots more. Even early stuff like Apache.
All sprouting about innovation does is show you’ve been drinking Microsoft cool-aid too long. That’s one of their favourites. You’ll claim they out-innovate open source while burying your head in the sand whenever they copy anything else. It is better where everyone is copying everyone else, then better ideas survive and new ideas can thrive by building on those existing ideas. Building blocks rather than ivory towers.
Like the internet you mean?
The internet was not developed as an open source project. It was developed as a DARPA funded research project.
I sure some of these have appeared elsewhere at some point, but that’s not the point.
Actually that is the point. Being first is evidence that you were the innovator.
You’ll claim they out-innovate open source while burying your head in the sand whenever they copy anything else.
Bad guess. If you read archives of this forum you will find that I’ve pointed out that Microsoft has only two innovations to its name: The wheel mouse and tooltips.
More than that, open source has failed to be the basis of innovation. Nearly ever successful open source project is merely an imitation of a previously successful closed source system.
We must live in different worlds. Lots of the open source/free software projects that I couldn’t live without were/are pretty innovative: emacs, TeX/LaTeX, python, web browsers (mosaic, then netscape, then mozilla, then firefox, …).
On the other hand, many other open source projects did start life as imitations, even if they then went on to arguably surpass the original: linux, gcc, ghostscript, the GNU command line utilities, etc. However, the same can be said for many closed source projects too. Do you have any hard evidence for the relative rate of innovation in free versus proprietary software?
Over time, open source improves at an exponential rate.
Unfortunately, the exponent is very close to 1. And, given the recent regressions in 2.6 kernels, is sometimes less than 1.
Perhaps you are confusing “exponential” with “power-law”. It is only the second that is a decreasing function when the exponent is less than one.
We must live in different worlds. Lots of the open source/free software projects that I couldn’t live without were/are pretty innovative: emacs, TeX/LaTeX, python, web browsers (mosaic, then netscape, then mozilla, then firefox, …).
If you think GNU emacs is innovative, we live in different worlds. It originated as a copy of an existing emacs for Lisp.
Python’s not particularly innovative. Browsers are, which is why I said nearly. . .
and yes, i was thinking of power law rather than exponential. oops.
We must live in different worlds. Lots of the open source/free software projects that I couldn’t live without were/are pretty innovative: emacs, TeX/LaTeX, python, web browsers (mosaic, then netscape, then mozilla, then firefox, …).
If you think GNU emacs is innovative, we live in different worlds. It originated as a copy of an existing emacs for Lisp.
It could perhaps be argued that GNU emacs was initially an imitation of Gosling emacs, which was not free/open AFAIK. However, Gosling emacs itself was inspired by various earlier editors called “emacs”, and the very first of those just happens to have been written by Richard Stallman
More to the point, emacs as a platform continues to be a hotbed of experimentation and innovation. Just look at planner-mode, or AUCTeX/RefTeX/preview-latex, or icicles, or org-mode, or ….
Python’s not particularly innovative.
Arguable, I suppose. Would Perl have been a better example? And just where is the “previously successful closed source system” that all these open source cross-platform scripting languages are supposed to be ripping off?
Browsers are, which is why I said nearly. . .
Yeah, and web servers, and CGI scripting, and Wikis, and BitTorrent. Quite a lot of web technologies, really.
Note that I’m not saying that free software produces more innovation than propprietary software. My guess would be that innovation has very little to do with the developers’ chosen licensing scheme or development model.
Gosling emacs itself was inspired by various earlier editors called “emacs”, and the very first of those just happens to have been written by Richard Stallman
So sayeth RMS. Other people’s memories of what the basis of “emacs” was differ. Details lost in the mists of time.
Yeah, and web servers, and CGI scripting, and Wikis, and BitTorrent. Quite a lot of web technologies, really.
BitTorrent is one that definitely qualifies. It’s the best use of p2p I’ve seen.
Note that I’m not saying that free software produces more innovation than propprietary software. My guess would be that innovation has very little to do with the developers’ chosen licensing scheme or development model.
That’s a better way of putting the point I was originally trying to make.
When evaluating open source, you must remeber one advantage that every article seems to skip. The product cannot die, and you are not tied to one vendor.
If you are willing to pay for it, and you will be if the software is important to your business, you can get someone to do patches and maintenance, even if the original developer cuts support. You can also go somewhere else if they try to overcharge you. This may not mean much to a home user, but it can be huge in the enterprise, where you need business continuity, and generally have the resources to hire someone.
When evaluating open source, you must remeber one advantage that every article seems to skip. The product cannot die, and you are not tied to one vendor.
Open source projects die all the time.
While you can, in theory, pay someone to take over maintenance of a dead project, in practice, that goes against the supposed lower cost of ownership of open source.
Open source projects die all the time.
While you can, in theory, pay someone to take over maintenance of a dead project, in practice, that goes against the supposed lower cost of ownership of open source.
At least with Free & OpenSource Software you have the option to do that (without the previous “vendor” crying foul).
Open source projects die all the time.
Right, but not the kind of open source projects that enterprise IT has been using. Projects like SymphonyOS could die at any moment. Projects like Apache will be in active development for the forseeable future. In fact I’d bet that Apache outlives IIS.
Once an open source project reaches the maturity required to run in an enterprise environment, it’s reached critical mass. The product will continue in one way or another, no matter what happens. For example, when David Dawes changed the license for XFree86, it was immediately forked and continued as Xorg, with more commercial backing than before.
And, as the above poster says, buying/funding support for an inactive OSS project is cheaper than buying support for an EOLed proprietary software product.
It puzzles me why open source software tends to immitate rather than innovate. The ones which were mentioned as innovative, such as TeX/LaTeX (Stanford) or Python (CWI) were developed by the academic community. Any academic who fails to produce innovative or scholarly work won’t get tenure and it’s in their interest to do so. The non-innovative OS seems to happen outside academia, maybe this is a factor. The question is why?
The Gartner strategist Dion Wiggins is surely a beginner or does not think business. Of course companies need a special open source strategy, what else should a consulting company sell to them?
But in fact it is important today to include Open Source in you software and It infrastructure portfolio. Because there is no way “not to use” open source and open source alternatives are pretty good in procurement discussions.
When you are the CTO of a fortune 500 and you announce substancial support for – say Open Office – give them 500 000 bucks for development cooperation, announce it to the press, guess how nice conditions Microsoft will offer your company.
Open source bluff rules.