Open-source software is on the cusp of a much broader
acceptance, said Brian Behlendorf, founder of Apache, during a
speech at a Software Development Forum conference last
week.
The advent of open source has meant big changes in development
and business paradigms and raised legal issues as well, industry
officials acknowledged during the event, entitled "Open Source:
Practical Solutions for Real World Problems".
"The business models of IT are shifting away from something
called a product," Behlendorf said, citing Microsoft's decision to
sell its software on a subscription basis rather than as single
products.
Behlendorf described open source as being at a "tipping point"
in which an idea becomes extremely widespread and then reaches
adoption, although he admitted that critical mass of open source
software adoption has not yet happened.
"The fact is, most of you running laptops out there are not
running something other than Windows," Behlendorf told the
audience.
What will drive adoption are factors such as Asian countries
like China that do not want to pay billions for Microsoft software
when open-source alternatives are available.
Companies are not ready to put their own software in the
open-source realm, he said. "Many companies are not yet ready to
kill their cash cow."
However, more service-oriented startups are moving away from the
concept of software as a downloadable object to providing software
as a website, Behlendorf said.
An IBM official touted the virtues and drawbacks of open
source.
"Open source forces you to be open to ideas," said IBM's Rod
Smith, vice president of emerging Internet strategy at the
company. IBM has embraced open source in projects such as the
Xerces XML parsers and the Globus grid computing effort.
Open source can be a major source of innovation, provides a
community approach to development and also presents a good way to
develop emerging standards. In addition, enterprise customers are
asking for open source, he said.
However, developers need to ascertain that an open-source
project meets customer requirements. Some perceived benefits, such
as lower total cost of ownership, are not always realized, he
added. Support also can be a concern.
"By far, the biggest issue inhibiting companies from making the
shift to open source software is support. Hands down. There's
nothing else that comes close," said Matt Asay, director of the
Linux Business Office at Novell.
An audience member, however, said open-source software enjoys
better support than proprietary, commercial software. "You file
your complaint and the original developer responds."
Oracle's Wim Coekaerts, director of Linux engineering at the
company, said the events of 11 September 2001 led users to replace
destroyed systems with Intel boxes running Linux. He cited the
incident as one example of a growing acceptance of Linux.
"Today, worldwide, tons of companies are production on Linux,"
Coekaerts added.
Lawyers on a panel related to legal issues noted that conflicts
could arise in incorporating proprietary software in an open-source
offering.
"A lot of open-source contributors have day jobs at related
industries and are contributing to projects without permissions of
employers, and some of those contributions could actually belong to
an employer," said Steve Mutoski, corporate attorney at Microsoft.
"It's a hypothetical risk, but it's there."
But audience member Jeremy Allison, co-creator of Samba, said he
has only seen open-source software being incorporated into
proprietary systems.
"I've never known proprietary code being contributed to open
source," Allison said.
Paul Krill writes for InfoWorld