Womens Hair Re Growth Rogaine Side Effects To Vytorin Lotrel Metformin Accutane After Before Sucralfate Taken With Nexium Hgh Weightloss Shots Can Prilosec Cure Ulcers Diamond Brite Louis Mo Celebrex And Canada Tramadol Is Prescribed For Bactroban Lowest Price Effexor Diary Ring Purim Online Card Music Free Melatonin And Zoloft Interaction Cymbalta Suicide 2006 Avandia Purchase Singulair Phone Cymbalta And Abilify Lexapro Klonopin Alcohol And Paxil Cr Avandia New England Journal Irina Allegra Viagra Next Day Shipping Tricor Pacific Capital Calcaulating Motrin Dose Base On Weight My Dog Ate Allegra D Information On Vytorin Effectiveness Of Diflucan Ventolin Package Insert Craftsman Brite Driver Parts Canada Coreg 25mg Picture Of Generic Nexium Solar Brite Abana Marietta Prosthetic Heart Valves And Coumadin Levels Drug Interactions With Lexapro Ibuprofen Motrin Rainbow Brite Dance Song What Does Synthroid Look Like Lexapro Tardive Dyskinesia Can You Take Celexa While Pregnant Actos Manufacturer Prednisone Use Medication Self-management Coumadin Gneric Viagra Lasix And Heart Surgery Zestril Lichenplanus Cla Supplement Danger Hoodia Bipolar Hoodia Case Studies Flomax For Kidney Stones

Apparently Open Source Software (OSS) is still a hot topic. Both Gartner and Forrester expects OSS to be a major player in future enterprise systems. In Norway, smaller counties talks about adopting to OSS to cut licensing cost, the Norwegian government has a strategic directive of favorizing OSS, while Simon Phipps from SUN explains that the greatest advantage of OSS is freedom over lower licencing cost.

I already have a bunch of issues with this - especially related to the government involvement in OSS, counties and small companies benefiting from OSS, and whether the intent of OSS has been a bit misintrepreted when it reached the majority of users?

The original intent of Open Source was massive collaboration for better software. Implicit in this statement lies the fact that OSS is mainly a thing for software developers. The idea that the software is free as long as you participate in improving it, and of course you can make your own adjustments to it for personal use as you see fit - as long as you share the source code. This is freedom… for software developers. I’m uncertain to what degree this freedom applies to politicians and corporate / small business stakeholders.

What matters most: licencing cost or Total Cost of Ownership? OSS is free to use… as long as the source code is avaliable. Cool! But if you’re a governmental institution or a non-software company, what costs do you add to maintain the OSS software? Enter Total Cost of Ownership: the total cost you pay for the system - everything for development, installing and maintaining the system. Licencing fee for proprietary software often include possiblities of updates to the software after each release. How is this handled with OSS?  At least consider the TCO before talking about lower licensing costs.

Are the terms Open Source Software and Open Standards being mixed? Open standards simply states that the protocols used to communicate between each other should be standardized. Open Source Software says that whatever’s under the hood of the car should be open and free for all to share and use… but why is this interesting for anyone but software developers? A new system, propietary or not, supporting an open standard is a somewhat guarantee that this system can communicate with the rest. Open Source Software has no such guarantee… if it doesn’t support Open Standards.
Mature the Enterprise Architecture by Standardizing the Technology: Yes, this is one of the mantras from Center of Information Systems Research (CISR) at MIT Sloan. Which basically means: try to run as much as possible on one or few platforms. If there are redundancy in systems within the organization, consolidate. So if your organization runs on Linux servers running OSS software, great. Keep doing so if it works for you. If your organization runs on a 80% Microsoft-centric environment and you’d like to move to a OSS based infrastructure… you’re no longer maturing the technology, you are replacing it. Hopefully you have a pretty solid business case for doing so that goes well beyond lower licensing fees.

“I don’t invest in servers, I invest in business”: A very blunt but true comment from a venture capitalist. Why do non-technological organizations even consider buying servers. Even more, why do they care what technology they’re running on? In most cases, organizations are better off sticking to their core business while outsourcing their technical dependencies to vendors. Just make sure there are plenty enough of vendors to support the technology in question. Again, standardizing becomes an issue.

“But this is just another system!”: For the most important group of people - the users - open source software looks exactly the same (or different) as a proprietary system. Consider the cost of change to move from one system to another, or the learning cost of using a new system. And in many cases, switching software system isn’t necessarily a simple question of economics. It may very well be the source to frustration and lowering morale in the working staff!
My conclusion to this is (so far) pretty simple:

The more technological savvy your organization is, go for OSS. Make adjustments to the software and tailor it to your specific needs. You will most likely save costs and gain competitive advantage in a unique software system or architecture.

However, if you’re one of the many other non-technical companies or organizations out there, consider the Total Cost of Ownership, what resources are needed to gain benefit from OSS and the impact a change in software products has on your organization - you’re most likely better off buying software-as-a-service rather than considering different technological standards.