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Open Source Software

A guide

There are some misconceptions about what Open Source software is, so I am going to start at the beginning by asking you to open your mind to some of the facts about open source and to marvel, as I do, at the incredible success that has been achieved.  

First of all, we support open source software, because it is good, it works and happy customers are always better customers.  We are not anti-Microsoft.  Microsoft offer some good products that solve some very difficult issues.  Sometimes the products offered by other companies or by the open source community are better, we look after our clients interests and advise what we think is the best product for the job.  Indeed many companies do not promote any open source software because there is no licence fee on which to make money.

Open source software is generally available free under the GNU Public Licence or similar.  It does not have to be under this licence nor does it have to be free, although generally it is. 

"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users."

Why do people choose to make software open source and "free it"?

This is a pretty fundamental question, the answers are different for every person, but here are some  general reasons.

• The code was a modification of an existing Open Source project an under the rules of the licence had to be open source.
• The desire to give back to the community
• To build a business supporting the software
• The desire to have a non commercially driven software industry.

There are a lot of reasons, many more than here, but effectively there are two camps within the Open Source movement, one is a political viewpoint as represented by the Free Software Foundation, the other is the practical viewpoint as represented by the more commercial interests.  There is a bit of friction between the two camps, but they work together because in practice they want the same thing, practical, good quality, standards based, open software that frees users to mix and match, not poor quality, proprietary software, that locks you in, can't be altered, tailored or fixed.

Anyway most of the open source software has been written by people primarily because they needed it.  Indeed there are huge numbers of people developing more software right now "because they need it" and they are getting more organised, grouping together and working collectively to solve the problems.  

This is not how software should be written.  The books make it clear, to develop software you need a road map, lots of planning and structured approaches.  Open source software is everything but that. Yet it works, not only does it work, it works very well!

Indeed in many ways the lack of commercial goals and direction are an asset.  I know that sounds bizarre but just hang on a tick and I will explain.

In the commercial world if someone creates a better bit of software than your market leading XYZ package you have limited choices, either make your product better, or buy the opposition and either kill it or incorporate it into yours.  Now if the reason that the product was good is incompatible with your grand plan then it will get killed even if it is "better" because it doesn't "fit".

With the Open Source model this doesn't, indeed it can not, happen.  Nobody owns it, so no one can buy it and no one can kill it.  Indeed there is no corporate model for it to not fit in with!

With the Open Source model someone might write a little bit of code to do something and then someone else might take that code in a different direction to the direction that they are going in, these are called forks.  Indeed there are frequently several different forks available for projects.  This is not very in efficient as not all of them are right and not all survive in the long term.  Well not entirely, because the forks all know what each other are doing (with open source there is no secrecy) and good ideas are adopted by everyone.  The really interesting thing is that this is a bit like biology, survival of the fittest, cross pollination and even evolution.  Biology has one rather famous or infamous analogy with computers, the virus. The interesting thing  here is that just as with biology, mono-cultures are very prone to plagues, and bio diversity is a huge defence against attacks.  Well surprise, surprise, computers are the same, if you are different you are much safer, and open source software tends to lead to more diversity therefore more security regardless of anything else.

Indeed if you use the most popular email client on the most popular operating system, with the most popular ...  then you are at the highest risk...  Outlook and Outlook express are not great email clients yet are used on 90% of desktops in a virus laden environment where email client exploits can make the virus spread like wild fire.  In the hours between release and antivirus protection becoming available hundreds of thousands of machines can be infected.  Without an exploit, the virus may need to rely on a user opening an attachment or clicking on a link, users are becoming much smarter now they might not check the email for hours, or days over a weekend so slowing the spread of the virus a lot.

Using something other than the most popular email client is easy to do and you could even have something better for your trouble.  (Take a look at thunderbird, it's free, imports mail and setting and addresses from outlook, has spam filters and more...) Free in all senses of the word, no money, no ties, you can alter it change it and do what you like (most of you will just use it)

Open Source means that the software features have been coded because they are needed, not because a marketing department think it will make the product sell.  Indeed the people who develop this software are not interested in selling it at all, they just want it to solve their problems, if others get involved and help then that is great, but users don't contribute code (although they do help debug), so they really are not that important.  The point is that no one makes money out of selling this software, so no one really bothers to sell it.

Now here is where we things start to get amazing.  

With no one planning development of it, with no one getting paid to develop it, it has evolved to the point where it is, at worst, nearly every bit as good as the best software that the most wealthy software companies in the world can develop and at best much better. 

Well lets go to mind boggling.

With no one selling any of this software, it is being taken up faster than ever before.

What come after mind boggling ?

Linux the open source operating system, is the most popular operating system with ISP's for internet servers, it is used in hundreds of thousands of devices as an embedded operating system most people use it everyday, but don't know it!

Well what next!

Linux is dangerously good, certain companies are now "concerned" enough to take action.  But what action can they take ?  There is no company owning it to be bought up, sued and destroyed.

The Allegation goes some thing like this... "SCO, funded by Microsoft, has been threatening litigation against Linux users, the case is weak as weak can be, the publicity and noise is big.  The goal, try and scare companies into not using Linux, no one in the industry has taken any notice, except IBM, Novell and a few other big guns who stepped forward and offered to help to anyone who did get sued. The scam appears to have backfired, lots more people know about Linux, they know that Microsoft thinks it is a threat to their business so-it-must-be-good."  

If you want to know more about this debacle put "SCO Microsoft and Linux" into your favourite search engine, there is a lot of it out there...

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