Advantages of Open Source Software
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| EXECUTIVE SUMMARY |
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These are the advantages of open
source software in a nutshell:
quality - The software
is typically well-designed, well-written, and based
upon open standards.
freedom - If there
is a feature lacking, and you cannot convince the authors
to add it themselves, the source code is available for
you to add the feature yourself.
support - There
is a vast community of people who use it, thus support
can be found from many different sources.
inexpensive - The
software is inexpensive to obtain and there are no licences
to manage.
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| THE ADVANTAGES
IN DETAIL |
| SOFTWARE FOR FREE |
| Open source software is typically
distributed for a price to cover the cost of copying and
no more. A distribution of GNU/Linux in a consumer electronics
store or a bookstore typically costs between AUD50.- and
AUD200.- depending on how many CDs are in the box, whether
or not there is a printed manual, and whether or not there
is a support contract included. If one has access to the
Internet, one can download open source software for the
cost of the file download. Since the initial cost of a
box of software is usually only a small part of the Total
Cost of Ownership (TCO) of software, the section "Costs"
(see below) attempts a more complete break-down of TCO. |
| INDEPENDENCE OF SOFTWARE VENDORS |
| In the event of a vendor's bankruptcy
or policy change, an enterprise may be forced to completely
change their IT solutions. With open source software,
one is no longer at the mercy of a company who has sole
control of the source code and is able to demand just
about anything. (e.g. "The Canadian software company
Bunyip, supplier of the Archie server software, closed
down in May 1999. Having no more support for the software
and no source code available left us no other choice than
stopping the service.") |
| SOLUTIONS BASED ON OPEN STANDARDS |
| "Data lock-in" is the name
for the situation where one's data are stored in a format
known only to the company whose software stored the data.
Enterprises who suffer from "data lock-in" are
forced to accept that company's software or pay an expensive
price for data migration to an open standard. One avoids
this trap with open source software since it is always
being based upon open standards. |
| SOURCE CODE ALWAYS AVAILABLE FOR
SECURITY AUDIT |
| Backdoors and Trojan Horses (see
The Back Orifice Backdoor Program and NSA backdoor creates
security hole in Windows) are extremely difficult to discover
in software available only in executable format. Open
source software, with its source open to all eyes, does
not have this problem. |
| THOUSANDS OF DEVELOPERS AND TESTERS
MEANS RAPID BUG FIXES |
| The most important open source software
packages are under constant scrutiny by the thousands
of IT professionals who use them every day. When a bug
or security hole is found, a patch is typically issued
within a few hours. Traditional software companies will
often take days, weeks, or months to issue a patch for
a security hole and bugs are often not corrected unless
it is in the next paid-for version. It
took Microsoft six months to deliver a fix against the
Melissa trojan! |
| CUSTOMIZATION OF TOOLS AND PROGRAMS |
| Customisation can be done by anyone
with access to open software source code and there is
no licence to obtain. |
| SAVINGS CAN BE CHANNELLED INTO SUPPORT
AND TRAINING |
| COST COMPARISONS |
| Which costs are avoided
if a project is done on a open source software?
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| Licence
costs are avoided by definition. The problems
due to the management and control of installed software
licences are non-existant. (Licences are a complicated
problem with Microsoft solutions - it is easy to
become an "outlaw" accidentally.) |
| Hardware costs are
avoided if older machines can be recycled.
Since libre software is typically more efficient,
one can re-use older hardware, and of course, there
is no licence charge for changing machines. |
| Maintenance costs
are reduced since
open source software is typically more reliable
and it is possible to maintain via remote access.
|
| Increased-demand
costs are reduced since
most open source server software is scalable. It
is often sufficient to just add a machine.
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| Re-installation
costs are avoided
since open source operating systems do not have
the aberrant habits of suffering viral infections
or crashing several times per week. |
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There has been much discussion
in recent years within the Information Technology
industry worldwide about the relative merits of
Microsoft’s operating systems and applications
on one hand, and the Linux & Open Source operating
systems and platforms on the other. While it is
very difficult to qualitatively analyse the technical,
reliability, security and total-cost-of ownership
differences between these two competing platforms,
it is a (reasonably) straightforward matter to
determine their purchase price and licencing costs.
This is exactly what this document undertakes
to do ( Warning: big PDF file >4 MB ): LINUX
VS WINDOWS PRICING COMPARISON .PDF (produced
by Cybersource Pty. Ltd ) Here are 3 excerpts
: EXECUTIVE
SUMMARY, CASE
STUDY: 50 USER SITE and BASIC
ASSUMPTIONS .
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| RELIABILITY |
| The systems engineers of universities
have known about the low maintenance costs of expensive
Unix systems for a long time. Now with GNU/Linux, systems
engineers can have the combination of a low-cost machine
with a low cost of maintence.
The IT press, engineers, and many user groups praise
open source software, and the recent revelations during
the Microsoft trials and the problems due to viruses,
trojans, and worms (Melissa, ILOVEYOU - CERT advisory
CA-2000-04 "Love Letter Worm") damn the proprietary
alternatives.
Even if one should always stay vigilant, the problem
of viruses and other "malware" is almost unknown
on Unix-based systems. Due to the protection mechanisms
designed into Unix systems, an ordinary user (or a process
owned by an ordinary user) is not permitted to install
or remove whatever he feels like.
Organisations such as the CERT (Computer Emergency
Response Team), BugTraq, developer groups, and security
companies are constantly on the lookout for possible
security holes which are rapidly corrected. Since Unix
systems are designed to be "compartmentalised",
the window of exploitation of security holes is typically
very small and closes very rapidly on well-administered
systems. The compartmentalisation of software also allows
machines to function without interuption for months
or even years despite software bugs.
Buggy software can usually be fixed or replaced without
rebooting the system.
A study was carried out by SWePIX (Swiss Web Performance
Index) on the websites of large Swiss enterprises in
different sectors (ISPs, banks, tourism, government,
media, etc...). It was found that a web server based
on Microsoft IIS crashed 3 times more often than a server
based on the open source software Apache.
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| LONGEVITY |
| A open
source software solution developed today will remain useful
tomorrow.
Software vendors often decide to stop supporting some
software or change the internal format of the data managed
by the software which renders new data incompatible
with the old version. The user has to choose between
switching vendors, which is usually expensive, or passing
onto the next version of the software, which can be
expensive too. In the case of open source software,
the advantage (always the same) is that one has access
to the source code. If one does not wish to upgrade
or change, the source code is always available if a
bug is discovered and can be patched at will to add
a functionality that the original author did not include.
It is important to note that one also has the source
code of the data since in the vast majority of the cases
open source software is based upon open standards (e.g.
SGML, XML, HTML, TeX, ASCII, etc...). It is thus always
possible to re-read the data and import it into a new
solution. This is usually not the case with proprietary
solutions.
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