Open Source: Software as a commodity
source through funding an annual “Summer of Code”
1 N icholas G Carr, IT Doesn’t Matter, Harvard Business Review, May 2003. Carr
subsequently elaborated on his ideas in Does IT Matter? Information Technology
programme. IBM, Sun, and Oracle all put money back
and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage, Harvard Business School Press,
into the open source projects they use – not as an altruistic
April 2004
gesture, but because it gives them a say in the future
2 T ony Collins, “PC deal could save public sector billions” Computer Weekly,
April 2008
development of the software and ensures its survival. 3 G NU General Public Licence version 1 1989
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.txt
4 M arket Share for Top Servers across All Domains, Netcraft news, February 2008
THE FUTURE FOR OPEN SOURCE
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/02/06/february_2008_web_server_survey.
Indeed, this is one possible model for the future
html
commercial adoption of open source. Companies are
5 B B troca Office por software livre até o final de, March 2006
http://tecnologia.terra.com.br/interna/0,,OI906852-EI4801,00.html
already finding themselves using open source software 6 C lark, Chris, Google – just how do they do that?, Perspectives, Autumn 2007
at arms’ length, supplied by their traditional IT suppliers
http://www.manufacturing.rbsgrp.net/GTsad/Reference_Papers/Periodical_back_
issues.asp
– for example buying Linux through IBM, Novell, or
7 “ FAQ: Forecasting the Cost of Sales”
Sun, and thereby indirectly supporting the open source
http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/FAQ/FAQ_forecasting_the_cost_of_
project. Buying open source through traditional software
sales.php <http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/FAQ/FAQ_forecasting_the_
cost_of_sales.php
companies also answers many of the worries over patent 8 Tony Collins, op cit
infringement, support, and third party certification.
9 A dvanced Message Queuing Protocol
http://jira.amqp.org/confluence/display/AMQP/Advanced+Message+Queuing
Proponents believe this gives the best of both worlds
+Protocol <http://jira.amqp.org/confluence/display/AMQP/Advanced+Message
– gaining access to high quality software without inflated
+Queuing+Protocol>
license fees, but with the comfort blanket of dealing with
an established vendor.
So five years after “IT Doesn’t Matter”, some CIOs are
finding open source software is at least part of the solution
to the challenge of software becoming a commodity. The
emergence of business models which allow commercial
companies to engage more comfortably with open-
source developers means this trend is likely to continue,
with CIOs adopting a “pick and mix” approach from
both open-source and proprietary software to best meet
business demands.
Perspectives on technology |
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