Open Source: Why it is good for your business and our government
When looking at software purchases, one might ask questions like: How much does it cost? How many clients can legally be connected simultaneously? Can I use it on my server, desktop and laptop systems without paying extra? Those questions will become a thing of the past, as Open Source permeates the global computing arenas making licenses irrelevant.
The “open-source” process describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials--typically, their source code. Open source software, is software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or license fees. This means that when your IT guy gives you a copy of the organization's open source software or installs it for you on your home personal computer, your company or your employee has not contravened any copyright law. Open source code evolves through community cooperation. These communities are composed of individual programmers as well as very large companies such as IBM, HP, Novell, Oracle and Sun.
The advantages of open source relate to cost and not locking your company into proprietary systems from which there is no easy escape, even if the company should require an escape due to support issues.
But open source doesn't take away commercial aspects of software. Indeed, open source software is quite consistent with capitalism; it increases wealth without violating principles of property ownership or free will. I too believe in strong intellectual-property rights. I believe any programmer has the same fundamental right as any other producer to `hoard' and sell the fruits of his/her labor on whatever terms the market will bear. While I choose to advocate for open-source software, I would never condemn others for choosing differently.
Before you commit to the adoption of open source, Critical Thinking 101 mandates that you ask the question, "Why?" Open source has impact not just for developers and in-house IT managers, but also potentially for every person throughout the value chain of an organization from management to knowledge workers to suppliers, customers, and partners.
By and large, the effects of open source are advantageous with benefits ranging from lower costs to simplified management to superior software.
Open source solutions incur lower software costs as they generally require no licensing fees. The logical extension is no maintenance fees. The only expenditures are for media, documentation, and support. As such, simplified license management. Obtain the software once and install it as many times and in as many locations as you need with no need to count, track, or monitor for license compliance.
Also, in general, Linux and open source solutions are elegantly compact and portable, and as a result require less hardware power to accomplish the same tasks as on conventional servers (Windows, Solaris) or workstations. The result is you can get by with less expensive or older hardware and this provides for lower hardware costs.
The solutions too exhibit enormous scaling and consolidation potential. Multiple options for load balancing, clustering, and open source applications, such as database and email, give organizations the ability to scale up for new growth or consolidate to do more with less. A software investment for an organization with 100 stations will serve one with 10,000 stations satisfactorily. There is not such things as per-user, per-machine, per-CPU (for multiprocessor systems), per-concurrent-user, or site licensing within the open source context.
Ample support is available for open source and is often superior to proprietary solutions. First, open source support is freely available and accessible through the online community via the Internet. And second, many tech companies are supporting open source with multiple levels of traditional paid support.
Training is also available. For example, certification courses and integrated training programs are coming from every major training vendor such as Redhat and Novell.
If your fear is that open source is not secure as the code is available, so anyone can figure out how to break it, then sample this. There are over 60,000 viruses known for Windows, 40 or so for the Macintosh, about 5 for commercial Unix versions, and perhaps 40 for Linux. Most of the Windows viruses are not important, but many hundreds have caused widespread damage. Two or three of the Macintosh viruses were widespread enough to be of importance. None of the Unix or Linux viruses became widespread - most were confined to the laboratory.
Because Linux and many open source tools are under constant peer review by a community of contributers, any weaknesses can be addressed and dealt with. That's the beauty of Open Source - fresh minds are in abundance to deal with any issues. The peer review process and community standards, plus the fact that source code is out there for the world to see, tend to drive excellence in design and efficiency in coding. Also, the modularity required for distributed development of Linux and open source also contributes to security with tight, function-specific, and isolated code segments. The reality is that with Windows, the problem isn't the skill of hackers, it's the slopping coding that opens the their supposedly closed doors to the Trojan Horse. Its all about the power of openness.
Because of openness, open source initiatives often lead to the establishment of industry standards. The lesson of the Web is that standardization is better than differentiation. As the past decade has shown, standardization with a proprietary flavor has its drawbacks: bloatware, security loopholes, eye-popping license fees and an unsettling reliance upon a single vendor.
Today, many of the leading global software tech companies will tell you how much they benefited from open source software and for this reason, they support continous development and growth of open source. Think Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Oracle, IBM, Intel and many others. See a list on http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/members. The Linux Foundation promotes, protects and advances Linux by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source development community to ensure Linux remains free and technically advanced.
Across the globe, governments are turning to open-source software which, unlike proprietary software, allows users to inspect, modify and freely redistribute its underlying programming instructions. Scores of national and state governments have drafted legislation calling for open-source software to be given preferential treatment in procurement. Brazil, for instance, has recommended that all its government agencies and state enterprises use open source. China has been working on a local version of Linux for years, on the grounds of national self-sufficiency, security and to avoid being too dependent on a single foreign supplier. Politicians in India have called on its vast army of programmers to develop open-source products for the same reasons. See it for yourself on the Internet, open source is big!
Why all the fuss? Modern private and public institutions generate a vast number of digital files. From client accounts, emails, birth certificates, tax returns to criminal DNA records, the documents must be retrievable in perpetuity. So governments are reluctant to store official records in the proprietary formats of commercial-software vendors. This concern will only increase as e-government services, such as filing a tax return or applying for a driving licence online, gain momentum. In Microsoft's case, security flaws in its software, such as those exploited by the LoveLetter, Blaster and SoBig viruses, are also a cause of increasing concern.
Software's transparency increases security because “backdoors” used by hackers can be exposed and programmers can root out bugs from the code. The open-source model of openness and collaboration has produced some excellent software that is every bit the equal of commercial, closed-source products. And, of course, there is no risk of being locked in to a single vendor.
When a government opts for a particular technology, the citizens and businesses that deal with it often have to fall into line. If our government opts for open-source software, three groups stand to benefit: consultancy firms and systems integrators, who will be called in to devise and install alternative products; firms which sell Linux-based products and services; and numerous small, local technology firms that can tailor open-source products for government and businesses.
The computer industry has certainly had shifts. Companies switched from mainframes to networked PCs when they become more cost effective. They switched from DOS to Windows applications when they discovered advantages in the Windows platform. When the Internet became widespread, many processes changed. These shifts involved changing the software people used and the way they thought about their needs.
The future is going open source especially on the cloud!
Dorcas Muthoni, muthoni@openworld.co.ke
Founder and CEO, OPENWORLD LTD
