Section 1.1. The Open Source Debate


1.1. The Open Source Debate

One way of looking at this book is as a tour of the benefits and responsibilities of using open source. The opportunity provided by open source is too large to ignore for any organization that seeks to support its operations with software.

The scope of open source has grown beyond basic development tools to become a top-to-bottom infrastructure for computing of all stripes, including development environments, databases, operating systems, web servers, application servers, and utilities for all types of data center management. Open source now encompasses a huge variety of end-user applications, such enterprise applications as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), tools such as portals and data warehouses, and integration tools for messaging as well as for web services. All of these can be the foundation of the sort of automation and productivity gains that can lead to a company's competitive advantage.

But in most organizations, discussing open source brings up strong opinions on all sides that obscure pragmatic analysis of the key question: can you use open source profitably at your organization?

There is no simple answer to this question. People on both sides have good points to make and are also protecting their own interests. At its worst, the debate becomes a cartoonish farce.

Programmers, systems administrators, and other technologists who are fascinated by various open source programs might tout the fact that the software is free. While this is true, managers sometimes suspect a hidden agenda of seeking more cool toys to play with, without adequate consideration of the other costs that are incurred when using any piece of software, including the costs of evaluation, testing, installation, configuration, customization, upgrades, operations, and support.

Managers frequently take the opposite position, that open source is not worth considering because it can lack features of commercial software such as support and maintenance services, installation scripts, and documentation. For good reasons, managers like the idea of one throat to choke if something goes wrong. It is a remedy for the finger pointing that characterizes all commercial technology support in multivendor installations. But hiding behind this objection ignores the fact that technologists at tens of thousands of companies have proved that the risks and responsibilities of using open source are manageable.

One ideal that is rarely achieved is to merge the creativity and technical brilliance of the open source world with the operational discipline and process of IT. But the two sides look at each other with disdain. The open source experts look at IT and see a massive skills gap: what is so hard about picking up and maintaining the skills needed to use open source? The IT professionals look at open source software and frequently see a productization gap because of half-finished products: what is so hard about finishing all the administrative interfaces, configuration tools, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and documentation to make the software useful?

Both the skills and the productization gaps represent real challenges to wider adoption of open source. Organizations that can learn to overcome the skills and productization gaps and put open source to work will have an edge in terms of cost and flexibility over those that cannot.

Fortunately, the debate has moved out of the cartoonish phase, and many organizations are now taking up the real job of analyzing what kind of company they want to be, what their long-term needs are, and whether open source can play some sort of role.

The prudent course is to choose carefully when to use open source, based on a thorough understanding of what is involved. This book won't answer every question for every different type of project. But it will show you how to evaluate open source software for common scenarios, and it will teach you how to get the answers to commonly asked questions and communicate them to others.



Open Source for the Enterprise
Open Source for the Enterprise
ISBN: 596101198
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 134

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net