The “Hoo-Haa” about Open Source (Part 1)

Internet has been the one great tool that bridges many aspects in our lives. Geographical distances, cultures and world information, are just some among the many points I can think of. But, more importantly, with the Internet, we see an easier access to resources. Through the World Wide Web, we can now engage and rely on resources located in a different geographical location within a few clicks.

The Internet heralded the start of a new era, which I will term as the “Open Era”. Gone are the days where everything is proprietary and close. Today, it is about sharing and opening up; it is about Open Source, and I will briefly touch on it over 3 points:

What?

Open Source refers to practices that open access to the source codes of software products. Anyone and everyone can have unrestricted access to it. They can then either contribute to the project, or modify the core of the software and develop their own versions of it.

Why?

Open Source solutions, especially popular ones, have been known to be worked on by hundreds of developers. That translate to faster bug fixes, faster improvements and faster enhancement roll out. And more importantly, it is FREE!

But it being free doesn’t mean you get a lousier product, as compared to a paid product. Think Apache (Web Server) and MySQL (Relational Database), some of the hugely successful and popular open source application used by many websites. Statistics collected by Pingdom shows that 49 out of 100 top sites in USA are using Apache. Even at home, here in Singapore, www.HardwareZone.com runs off it too. So who’s to say free ain’t good?

How?

“If everything is free, why is everyone putting time and effort for no returns”? you must be thinking. That is because you are thinking of the traditional license revenue stream for software.

The Open Source revenue model is based mainly on a service revenue stream. It is about selling one’s expertise on the tool(s) provided. Cumbersome licensing cost and matrices are a thing of the past with Open Source. Some examples are Red Hat and Vyatta.

Red Hat is a very popular linux operating system, based on the Open Source Fedora Project, which is based on the Linux Kernel – comprising of many open source software in it. Fixes and enhancements are rolled out to the community through Fedora before being established as a stable tool for the enterprise through Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). There’s even another Open Source OS based directly on RHEL in the form of CentOS (Community Enterprise Operating System). And that is totally free.

Vyatta is a routing appliance based on another favour of linux, the Debian project. Currently, it is gaining popularity among some part of the community as a very suitable replacement over expensive proprietary choices like Cisco.

Both offers a community version (free) for usage, but charges for support, and they seem pretty successful at it, especially Red Hat. The mentality among technologists are very much open now as compared to in the past.

Next month I will share my views about comparisons between Close Source (Proprietary) and Open Source in the 2^nd part of the topic, and how the game is changing.

Meanwhile, take a look at what Google’s interpretation of “Open” is and if you are interested in exploring options in deploying open source solutions, drop us a note and we will gladly share with you our expertise!