Advantages of open source: Revisited

I feel that is important for me to further analyze the benefits of open source software. In a previous post, I highlighted the cost-savings of open source and did not mention any of the other advantages that it provides. This post should provide a more balanced view of open source and the intrinsic benefits that free software provides.

Low Cost

This is the benefit that I focused on in my previous post. Cost is the most obvious benefit when people compare it to proprietary software. How does open source achieve this low cost?

I believe that the open source development model is the most efficient way to create software. With proprietary software development, each software company creates an isolated software silo. Meanwhile, their competitors are spending resources to create software that does almost the exact same function! Compare that to the open source model, where worldwide resources can be shared to develop an application.

Some people claim that while open source software may be free to acquire, it has a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). These studies have been quite controversial because they are usually funded by Microsoft. Talk about a conflict of interest!

Even if Linux currently has higher integration costs, you can expect these costs to only become smaller with time. This is due to the fact that open source software is becoming more widely deployed and easier to manage. This means that there will be less training and maintenance costs to be accounted for in a TCO study.

Security

Open source software is usually considered to be more secure than proprietary software. I believe this can be attributed to two driving factors. The first factor is that the source code of the software is publicly available. This means that if the community is large enough, there will be many programmers analyzing the code. This has been stated as "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."

The second factor is very closely tied to the first. If programmers know that their code will go through a worldwide peer review, it provides an incentive for them to create high-quality code.

Continuity

With proprietary software, if the software company goes out of business then the software will simply die with the company. It is also possible for the software company to decide to stop maintaining a piece of software. In both cases, you are out of luck if your business depends on that software.

With open source software, you are not dependent on any one entity for the project to stay alive. If the current developers stop working on the software, anyone can use the source code to simply continue from where they stopped.

Flexibility

With traditional proprietary software, you were at the mercy of the software developer to listen to requests from users. It is common for business needs to dictate the future direction of software. In these cases, the software company will listen to large customers or a majority of their customers. If you are a small customer and have a unique need, it is unlikely that the software developer will be responsive to your requests.

With open source, you can add the features that your business needs and you can fix the bugs that affect you. There is no requirement to work with the developers, although the community benefits when you contribute your changes to the project.

What do you do if the open source developers are impossible to work with? In these extreme cases, it may be best to create a fork of the original project. Open source provides you the freedom to work with developers that meet your needs.

Proprietary software does not offer this freedom; in fact the industry does its best to prevent it. This is often called vendor lock-in, which is a method that software companies use to prevent customers from leaving. Open source companies prefer to simply use good service to ensure customer loyalty. Which method do you prefer?

Comments?

Please share any comments you may have about this topic. I really enjoy getting feedback on these topics. "The more brains the better!" said the Zombie. (Hey, it's almost Halloween!)