The dominance of open source software (Part 2)

The dominance of open source software (P.1)

There is some general objection to the professional application of OSS. Most are not valid, or no longer valid in 2007.

Unreliable?

Major system integrators such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard rely on open source software to offer solutions for their customers, and they pay thousands of skilled developers to work on these. OSS project. 81% of Fortune 500 companies accept the use of OSS in production. Initial installation of OSS infrastructure tools has or cannot be approved before. They are usually installed especially because administrators view them as operating and stable.

Reliability and reliability are improved by providing access to the source code. It is more difficult to introduce Trojan horses or backdoors in open source software than in proprietary software. Simple code errors such as external array checking and more sophisticated errors such as buffer overflows are more easily encountered by dozens of external developers than by a few developers inside. .

Improvements in performance through rebuilding as well as simple bug fixes become much faster with OSS than with even the most thoughtful proprietary software vendor, where developers The developer is isolated from the user-reported errors. Finally, there is an improvement in the supportability that belongs to reading the source code; Developers can learn by reading exactly how a certain product works and therefore how to change it. On the contrary, these changes can be modified by other developers of security, performance and stability improvements.

Trade support

Software companies such as Red Hat have a strong market for capital accumulation and making money based entirely on open source software. Other companies are investing in OSS projects to support their original business; For example, HP sells servers and storage solutions, and their contributions to Linux are cheaper than the current warranty required for their proprietary HP-UX and tools. related.

There are also efforts to invest in open source software to be replaced in a competitive way; for example, IBM's contributions to web development and system management tools are designed to recover sales from Microsoft. The company has enjoyed great success in history when IBM's costs in mid-sized companies by replacing AS / 400 systems with Windows-based systems.

OSS providers are increasing risk investments; Examples from 2007 include IPO network monitoring provider is GroundWork and EMC of VMWare. The MySQL open source database management system provider expects IPO in early 2008. These companies are expected to generate sales and profits from services and support.

The risks of support are actually greater than proprietary software. Proprietary software firms can go out of business, pouring their inner knowledge into the wind when their developers find another place somewhere.

Products may be forgotten because they are not profitable enough, requiring customers to live with the increased risks of continued use of unmodified software, or keeping the cost of switch to another alternative system. Finally, software companies can be bought by competitors, making comparable products abandoned in order to reduce the cost of vendor support. Conversely, if OSS is available, there will always be two support strategies in the last resort: Users can make the required changes themselves, or they pay someone to make changes. there. Usually, one of the original developers of the OSS project can be hired directly to provide customization features at the lowest cost, even if the user is not dependent on such arrangements.

Led by ideology

OSS is often described as being against capitalism, countless culture, and things like that. OSS projects initially reflected their academic roots - and in the case of the Internet, the initial investment of the US Federal Government. The freedom to read source code supports collaboration in software development. The GNU General Public License (GPL), an early OSS license, requires that anyone who changes the GPL source code to redistribute will make all changes available to the public in a real way. .

This non-secret license was at least part of a manifesto: Political power through the liberation of ideas and denial of copyright in the traditional way. And some disciples are motivated by disillusionment with rich, powerful and big software companies - especially Microsoft and Oracle. But the real people who created the software chose to use GPL to lead to wider and faster application of their jobs, as with Linux in recent years and Java in late 2006. Now Software companies distribute OSS as the basic part of their business model, sales and profits stem from additional services rather than the software itself. There are users who prefer open source software for dogmatic reasons, but most users have more practical concerns: cost, stability, flexibility and maintainability.

Legal risks

The potential legal issue of applying OSS in government has emerged as a concern. OSS licenses vary in structure, and only public source code guarantees users unlimited rights. A specific deployment may contain dozens of software components, and each component may have different license terms. Some components of third parties may be deployed against the terms of the license, or may simply not be given a license for distribution.

The legal review of software licenses is required as a matter of Government policy, whether or not to open the source. There are also legal risks with proprietary software, whether copyright or patents are violated.

For example, Alcatel / Lucent was awarded $ 1.25 billion in February 2007 when a US court ruled that Microsoft had a legal responsibility to violate patents on MP3 compression technology. (If the MP3 compression algorithm is OSS, will Microsoft be penalized?) OSS reduces the possibility of copyright infringement because the source code is visible, but it also complicates the legal review because many licenses exist. (For example, Linux is a version of the GPL, but Apache is a version of BSD, and Apache plug-ins may have other license terms.)

Hundreds of cases of copyright infringement and patents have been collected by software companies against each other about OSS, first based on complaints that intellectual property protection creates a way in which there is no right in an OSS product. None of these cases are relevant to users of the required applications, so the importance of this legal risk to the Ministry is low. Competitors have also made clear legal agreements that are not sued to cooperate in OSS projects and avoid such lawsuits; Even competitors like Microsoft and Novell have done such a deal in late 2006 to provide assurance of support for their customers, many of which depend on continued success. of both companies.

Poor user interface

Historically, user interfaces are difficult to learn and difficult to use. Infrastructure community and development tools place high priority on functionality but low priority of usability. This awareness is given to contributors, adding new functionality is higher than the awareness given to make the user interface more smooth or easy to learn. Except as the original Netscape web browser was commercial, proprietary products.

Currently, the more important thing is to put into the quality of the user interface because they offer competitive advantages for products with poor user interfaces. The Firefox browser has achieved critical success and a global adoption rate of 18% in 2006 by providing a quality user experience. (Its main competitor, Internet Explorer, doesn't force users to pay anything and doesn't require installation, making that 18% figure very impressive). Linux distribution Ubuntu has achieved rapid adoption because it is easier for users with less technical skills to install, learn, and use than other distributions. PMN GIMP graphics editor offers the power and ease of use that it competes with proprietary commercial alternatives, as well as the Java Eclipse graphics development tool. Previously, the application of OSS was restricted to users of sophisticated technical knowledge who could customize the users' poor experience, but now OSS has reached users. they cannot have such patience.

Nghia Le