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Open-Source Software

Why?

Posted by Richard on 22-2-2010 6:29 pm

Open-Source software is saving millions of dollars in software licensing. With thousands of available open-source software solutions how do you know if this technology model is right for your business?

A cousin of mine once made a cute little comment. He said suppose someone built a computer that was small in size, capable of petabit download speeds, zettabytes of memory and yottabytes of drive space it sold for less than $100. What would be the one question asked? ……Does it support Windows? Having been in this business since 1983 and been there and done that from mainframes to i-phones, I can never seem to understand why it matters. If it does the job, who gives a Rattus rattus posterior? I used to get a big kick out of the question “It it IBM compatible” back in the 80’s and 90’s.

Open-source software can be wonderful, affordable, customizable and better documented than anything else on the market. It can also be just a script a CSS or even a picture. You see the beauty is in the license. Most open-source licenses include somewhere in them these great words: “you are free to…” Unlike the polyethylene, shrink-wrapped, over priced soon to require a security patch software license that reads…”you are prohibited from…..” I don’t mean to suggest that commercial software is not worth the cost. A lot of time and effort goes into software engineering. I rather suggest that one does not rule out open-source solutions as inferior. A lot of effort goes into open-source development too. In some cases there are more people contributing to the source code, documentation, testing and support than went into that very stylish box that now sits so proudly in the wastebasket. In many cases these code pounding rebels offer it at no cost to the user. So isn’t it worth consideration?

So what is the deal with this free stuff? I mean if it is free that means it ain’t worth nuthin right? Wrong! Even if you made a poor judgment call on an open-source solution, you are only out time. You can’t say that about the ploy package. By the way, have you ever tried to return an opened shrink-wrapped software package? Now image this same scenario at the enterprise level. Trying open-source solutions, even if you do not plan to use them on the enterprise level makes sense from a risk-mitigation standpoint. Not to mention that you could get some insight into what works and what does not within the enterprise before shelling out a couple thousand Ben Franklins.