The Open Source Story

Open source is the way to go for companies. That's what is being touted these days. We examine the truth of such statements, looking at the benefits of open source and the issues involved

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Why reinvent the wheel? Take the wheel that somebody has spent a lot of good time and energy to develop, and make it better or modify it to suit yourself. This is the philosophy that open source is based on. 

Philosophy is fine, but what does it mean? In the closed-source model, you can use a program the way the vendor has intended you to use it. You can't make changes to it, such as fixing a security glitch if you notice one or tweak it to suit the changes in your business. In the open-source approach, the programmer gives out the source code of his program, so that you can see the architecture of the program, and copy it or make changes to it if you want. This way you have more control over the software that you run.

So, all this excitement about open source has to do with being able to see and change the code, you may ask. This may gratify a developer's ego, but in a business environment, how many people, other than some techies in the systems room, would even understand those long lines of code? The good news is that the philosophy of open source, especially when coupled with the fact that the closed-source model follows a very different pricing approach, lends open source a viable business sense.

This is a business' total cost of ownership (TCO). When a company buys software, the cost of software itself is just one cost incurred by the company. What is more of a concern to the IT manager is the TCO the software is liable to. This includes ensuring regular updates, looking into vulnerabilities and security issues and cost of support and maintenance, amongst others. 

With open-source software, the IT manager can look forward to a much lower TCO. Here's how:

Free or low-cost software
Most open-source software is usually free or comes at a very low cost. You either download the software or, if you are buying it, you normally pay a one time purchase fee and no additional license fee. But, why would you buy if you can get it for free? Read our Q&A boxes. 

IT managers will also easily find open-source apps for most needs on the Internet. In terms of the OS, there's the most well-known open-source OS of all, Linux with its various variants. Then there's Free BSD. There are also free or low-cost apps that range from office suites, graphics packages, databases, Web and server software to scientific and engineering apps and software to implement ERP solutions.

No extra licensing costs 
This is the killer argument of them all. Commercial software vendors usually have very strict licensing terms, most commonly charging on per client license basis. For example, when you buy a proprietary server OS for your server with many clients, you pay for each client that will access it. Add to this the cost of all commercial apps, calculated on a per license basis, that you will run, and you can see why IT managers are increasingly being attracted to the open source route.

No upgrade costs
What makes business sense for commercial vendors is to release frequent upgrades to their existing products, accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of support for the previous versions. They may also move to new file formats, to read which you will have to purchase new software from them. This often results in a catch-22 situation for the user. What this means is that if you continue with the earlier version, you will not get any support, while if you upgrade, you'll have to pay software cost and license fee on a per client basis all over again. Also, your business may not require you to upgrade, but just because the vendor has upgraded and withdrawn support to the previous version, you often have no choice left but to upgrade. In such a case, the IT manager has to plan for such contingencies in his budget. 

How does open-source software help here? First, here the cost of upgrades is negligible when compared to that of commercial software, and is often covered in annual sunscription fees. 

Stable and secure
The very concept of open source encourages security and stability. As opposed to the closed-source model, where a few teams work on the security aspect, in the open-source model the code is open to the scrutiny of a vast community of developers. So, the chances of someone identifying and fixing bugs are much, much higher than in the closed-source model, contributing to secure and robust applications. In the closed-source model, on the other hand, even if a user files a bug report, its up to the vendor to decide if and when he wants to fix it. So, the TCO, in the case of open source, amounts to a reduction in security systems and administrators. 

This is not to imply that there are lesser number of bugs in open source software. Only that they tend to be spotted and patched faster.

For most back end jobs, like firewall, gateway, proxy etc, you do not need the latest hardware. Opensource software can be deployed for such purposes on older machines, stripping out unwanted parts if necessary, thus saving on hardware upgrade costs as well.

Customization
Being able to customize software to suit to your specific business needs is another asset. When you deploy an existing app in your scenario, you may find that some aspects don't work the exact way you want it to. So, you customize the code, and if you give the modified code out, you may also end up contributing to the improvement of the program. 

Also, as your business needs grow or change, you have the freedom to modify your solutions without being constrained by software.

Why is proprietary software being Open Sourced?
Some proprietary software vendors have opened the source of some of their products. Apple, for example, has open-sourced its Darwin and Rendezvous (a technology that lets you auto-configure computers on a network) projects, amongst others. These fall under the Apple Public Source License. Sun, too, has some products that fall under its Community Source License. 
How do such vendors benefit? These companies have enough qualified and well paid developers on its rolls to deliver quality products. So, what's the catch? Opensourcing (similar to making available for free) is one way to larger acceptance. Another reason is that the availability of the code contributes to quicker development of not only the core product, but also of add-ons and associated products.

Juhi Bhambal

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