Free and open source software is seeing steady adoption among
small to
large UK businesses, as they begin to take it to the heart of
their organisations for
key enterprise applications in a bid to
lower IT costs.
Good enterprise-class open source support and services have also
helped to drive adoption, as much as the fact that free and open
source (FOSS) software products are continually maturing and
improving both on the server and the desktop.
What is free and open source software?
Free and open source software, termed F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS
(free/libre/open source software), is software that is licensed
liberally to grant the right of users to study,
change, and
improve its design through the availability of its source code –
hence the ‘open source’ moniker.
Both free and open source software share similar development
models, based on a community of users sharing and developing the
application code.
However, free software has a philosophy of freedom of use and
development, whereas open source focuses on the strengths of its
peer-to-peer development model.
How is open source software licensed?
An open source license is a copyright license for computer
software that makes the source code available under terms that
allow for modification and redistribution without having to pay the
original author.
These licenses may have basic restrictions, such as a
requirement to preserve the name of the authors and the copyright
statement within the code.
One popular set of open source software licenses are those
approved by the Open Source
Initiative (OSI) based on their
Open Source Definition
(OSD).
How do the commercial and open source communities get
along?
Interestingly, commercial companies such as
SAP,
IBM and
Microsoft have an interest in the
open source model, with IBM and HP having a long history in
open source innovation.
In July 2009, Microsoft, for the first time ever, released
driver code to the
Linux community, saying that it was responding to demands from
the two user communities.
Microsoft developed a technology sharing relationship with
Novell in 2006, establishing a
joint development lab in 2007 to explore how the commercial and
open source software communities might work more closely
together.
The move was met with a mixture of interest and scepticism, and
eventually led to the
two giants working even more closely in 2008.
What sorts of open source products are available?
Pretty much any desktop or server application you can think of,
from email and collaboration through to project management will
have an open source equivalent.
One of the more popular
Microsoft Office
alternatives is
OpenOffice, which provides
equivalent office productivity applications to Microsoft for free,
with files that interoperate - to a great extent - with
Microsoft’s.
In terms of operating systems, open source has had some very
powerful and popular operating platforms that have been available
for many years, such as Linux (including
Ubuntu and
Debian GNU/Linux), and
FreeBSD.
The open source database system
MySQL is being used in
large-scale enterprise systems, powering for example the
advertising engine on Google, and the whole Facebook site.
Open source is also being used to run major chunks of, for
example, the
internet or financial and banking infrastructures.
In fact, open source software is doing so well, that
open source hardware is now on the way!
Why don’t more enterprises use open source?
Although open source can be a
great solution in tough economic times, many businesses
see using open source as risky.
Some businesses have a
perception that open source licenses are viral, and that the
applications lack formal support and training. Others believe that
products change too much, and
lack a long term roadmap.
Businesses may also
want the comfort of having a relationship with a commercial
account manager from a software firm, rather than relying on the
developer community for help and support.
What sort of support is there for Open Source?
Over the years, the open source community has been attempting to
meet the demand for high-quality open source support,
from enterprise users.
As a result, over the past few years, new enterprise service
companies have emerged and entered the area dominated by the likes
of Red Hat,
Novell and IBM, which do offer
robust enterprise-level support for open source products.