Open Source Software on Linux & Windows

Open source software (OSS) have been around for quite a while now and have

gained ground over the years. A lot of interesting and useful projects in open

source are not only gaining market share (e.g. Firefox) but in many cases are

even leaders of the pack (eg Apache). So much so that many organizations are

looking at free or open source solutions as an alternative for cutting software

license costs. We try to dispel myths and let you know what is the current and

possible future state of affairs in this area.

Myth 1: Open source

= zero cost



This is probably one of the biggest myths that surround OSS. The

“Free” in “Free and Open Source” does not mean that it won't cost you anything

in the long run. Instead it means that you have the “freedom” to do what you

want with its code. This includes modifying it, giving it away for free, or even

charging for it. The freedom is not absolute however. There are restrictions

placed on your behavior in case you wish to use, modify and distribute OSS. You

will also need to pay for support in case you use it. Which means that if you

are running your company on computers and these are critical to your

functioning, OSS is not going to come at zero cost to you. You will need to pay

for support as you would really not want to face downtime in case something goes

wrong. The TCO matter about proprietary software licenses including support and

OSS software with support as a paid add-on is debatable and we suggest you study

the total economics of moving to OSS over a proprietary solution taking all of

this under consideration.

Myth 2: Open source

= no licenses



Another mistake that people make is that they think by selecting open source
software they needn't worry about licenses. Unfortunately, that is again not

true. There are tons of different licenses for different OSS and one has to be

compliant with all of them legally as with any proprietary software license. The

GPL is one of the most famous of these licenses.

Myth 3: Free & open

source = Linux



This is probably one of the biggest mistakes people and organizations

make. Open source only means software whose source code is available for you to

use. This does not tie in with any particular operating system. In fact, taking

a look at the most popular lists at SourceForge.net (one of the biggest

repositories of open source software), I found that in the top 25 list of all

time popular open source software, each one of them is available as a Windows

binary, with 16 of them being only for Windows.

There are tons of open source projects that run on Windows and some of the

most popular Linux OSes have larger installed bases on Windows (such as Firefox).

You also get a lot of free software available for Windows as well. Not just from

Microsoft (such as IE, Visual Studio 200x Express, SQL Server Express and many

others), but also from many third party companies.



Using open source software does not mean that you can only use them on Linux.
You can very easily use the open source software on Windows as well. Linux does

come with a huge number of open source software out of the box though.

The future



Open source is here to stay no doubt. Not just on the Linux side but also

for a lot of proprietary software developers as well. Most large companies —

IBM, Sun, HP and Microsoft — are all investing in open source quite deeply.

Recently, Microsoft contributed a large amount of code to both the Apache

foundation as well as to Samba to make them more interoperable with Windows. Sun

has been talking of making Java completely open source for a while and it looks

as if this might be true soon. Applications such as Firefox are gaining ground

over Internet Explorer and Gimp is now wandering into the lairs of the graphic

designers in place of PhotoShop.

But there is a darker side to the picture as well. Not all open source

projects continue to do well. Nessus — one of the most powerful open source

network vulnerability scanners — had to turn proprietary to sustain itself.

Recently news about stagnation of development due to no contributors in the

OpenOffice.org project was reported.

The future however continues to be bright for open source. As mentioned

above, most large companies are investing in this. You need to keep an eye out

on which projects are really well supported — as these are projects that will

continue to flourish and grow. Smaller projects will fall by the wayside —

especially in a bad economy where developers might not be able to contribute as

they are busy holding on to jobs that actually pay!

As with any software procurement exercise, even for open source software you

will need to perform feasibility and cost studies. You also need to know how and

who to turn to in case of issues that come up. Play the different software

vendors (OSS and proprietary) against each other and get discounts wherever

possible as well as look at package deals such as BizSpark or DreamSpark that

reduce costs all round. And remember that you should not go by any hype —

whether from a proprietary vendor's marketing droid or from (almost religious)

open source fanatics. Take what you require and use both types of software in

the best possible combination.