One argument questions the OSS Business Model whereby the software is provided free but professional maintenance and technical support is charged – the point being that the software is purposely designed to be inscrutable, forcing the user to take up a support contract. On top of this there are the recurring questions of how high a quality is OSS, and the anecdotal lack of response to end-user bug fix requests.
IT giants have patronized OSS as another front in which to wage inter-rival conflict, and at the same time gaining control over what some perceived as a threat to traditional IT. There is certainly no revolution in OSS waiting around the corner. Leaving aside a small minority within OSS, exemplified by Richard Stallman, who do see OSS as much as a political as an IT question, most OSS supporters are pragmatic and the trend towards the OSS Business Model is growing.
Any business that adopts OSS without a support and maintenance contract would become a hostage to circumstances and failing in due IT governance. In today’s climate of compliance and multiple regulatory regimes, it would be unthinkable to adopt any significant or mission-critical software without such a contract. The success of JBoss and a growing band of OSS projects adopting the OSS Business Model is testament to its commercial viability.
The main beneficiaries are the consumers of the OSS, since the cost of entry to powerful software is now zero. This point is truly revolutionary and is one feature of the political agenda that has not been washed away. To understand its implications is not easy but it plays at the centre of what drives OSS – namely mass adoption. To carp about bug requests not being fixed rather misses the point: if software fails to deliver it will not be used. If an OSS user has a persistent issue that is not being attended they can always find an alternative, whether OSS, priced software, or they roll up their sleeves and perform their own fix.
The issue over quality is also a red-herring: studies have shown that the quality of software from vendors is as varied as custom in-house developed software. If anything, the opportunity for increasing the quality in OSS is higher than with closed software. For example a number of vendors promoting software test products openly apply these to the leading OSS – how many closed source vendors would permit such public display of their laundry?
IBM was one of the first of the large IT players to support OSS, with its input into Linux, and then the launch of the hugely successful Eclipse Foundation and its Eclipse platform. Sun has also recently embraced OSS in a major move, offering OpenSolaris and a number of high-end Java development tools based on its OSS NetBeans platform, and going far beyond its original OpenOffice and NetBeans projects. Oracle has been in the news with its increasing interest in OSS, for example acquiring embedded database supplier, Sleepycat Software. Even Microsoft is sponsoring and participating at OSS events.
OSS has a sustainable Business Model and one irrespective of the role played by the major IT players in OSS – not withstanding that these IT players have helped propel OSS. The statistic that most consumers of OSS do not opt for support contracts can lose sight of the fact that when the numbers downloading the software run into many thousand or millions you only need a small fraction of paying customers to make the enterprise viable.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
