DataSync Business News

There’s a big movement out in the technology sector, and it’s taking the world by storm. It’s the open source movement, and it’s gaining major traction worldwide. So what is open source? For those of you new to open source, it’s a method for creating software centered around the idea of collaborative development. Instead of only allowing a small group of software programmers to build software, open source software is given away for free on the internet, giving millions of developers around the globe access to the code used to build software. This allows software developers access to improve and extend what the original developers started on. The result is software that is flexible, powerful, and very secure.

Opensource.org, the worldwide open source initiative, states that:

“Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”

As the above quote states, the best feature of open source is that vendors can’t hold their clients hostage to their software (Microsoft anyone?). This allows businesses to choose software, modify it, and use it without major upfront costs.

How big is open source? Gartner recently published market research on this very topic. It states that by 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source. Furthermore, by 2011, open source will become the primary software for cloud-based providers (massive data centers connected to the Internet).

Now you’re wondering, how can software companies afford to just give software away for free? It’s all in the model. Instead of charging large fees for access to their software, open source companies charge for the service, support, and enterprise features of the system. Red Hat has a market cap of $4.3 billion, and they give away Red Hat Linux away for free. However they charge for the services, support, and enterprise features of their package. Another company, Zimbra, was purchased by Yahoo for $350 million, and their software can be downloaded any day of the week at zimbra.com. Their revenue comes from the support and “add-ons” for their open source package. The model is superb in that these companies can make money offering corporate support, while still offering the tremendous advantages of the open source software model.

So what does it mean for you? In the future you won’t be required to pay insane license fees to big software providers to get software that locks you in. Software development companies aren’t going anywhere, but instead of holding us all hostage to their products, they will give software away, and make money by offering value added services and enterprise features. In order for computers and technology to really permeate our lives, we’ve got to be able to trust the technology that we depend on. Open source software is the development method for the next generation that gives developers the freedom to build the right software without the restrictions that current software is inhibited by.