A 'not-so-cheap fight' over open source!

PUNE: There's more to open source than just being a cheaper alternative, says one.

It might be initially cheaper, but not in the long run, says another.

Talk of the open style of software development, and its adoption track at the enterprise level, and you can hear voices, equally vocal, on both sides.

It's been quite some time now that open-source has set its roots well in the commercial realm of the technology space. Yet, the ruckus between open Vs proprietary pugilists continues.

“We could have failed against proprietary counterparts if we had used a box approach with enterprise Linux,” feels Satish Mohan, head, global engineering centre, Red Hat India. But using the 'value proposition' approach with 'service beyond vanilla product' and access to ecosystem has worked in favor for Enterprise Linux, he tells.

In the OS version of enterprise solutions, there are no hassles like upgrade investments or heavy exit costs etc. That's why there is a good push from all sectors like BFSI, manufacturing or government towards early adoption of Enterprise Linux, Mohan shares.

Except the early-phase challenges of driving customer renewals in the enterprise market, there hasn't between much trouble in fighting for ground in a territory so far reigned by proprietary biggies, he says.

On the other side is Abhijit Sane, business development manager, Healthcare domain of ERP DesignTech Systems, that has been developing its ERP solution on Microsoft .Net platform. Next too, it will work on Silverlight and upcoming Microsoft platforms, which he feels the enterprise customers would be happy to embrace like the 37 customers it has on .Net version.

Ask him the dents made by OS rivals, and he confidently shrugs off any damage worth assessing. Picking up the cost argument he stresses that initial costs may pose a rosy picture in favour of an OS option. “But later on, the lifetime value factor and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and subsequently higher costs tip the scales in favour of non-OS products.”

While Sane is ripping off the 'cheap' argument against OS companies, Mohan highlights the clichéd bone of contention in a new colour. “There's much more to OS than just being cheap. That makes its case for the scale and requirements demanded in enterprise space too.”

Move beyond these two corner rooms and it's not hard to find these arguments echoing in other quarters, and thus, the debate between Open Vs Proprietary struts along in the enterprise domain also.

Arguments against open source hover around lack of a reliable source of assistance, distance between developers and real customers, lack of commercial incentive to innovate, absence of development mandates that are more market-oriented, and issues around scalability and timeliness of meeting customer requirements.

In a news report some time back that gave glimpses of 'The Magic Cauldron', the seminal work on open source economics written by Eric Raymond, we could see other advantages of proprietary software like close contact with real-world customers, consumer-oriented software.

On the anti-polar end, techophiles arguing in favor of OS highlight lower purchase cost, zero-license-fee cost advantage and more freedom than proprietary software as key areas of edge.

Jabbing at the support argument served by proprietary side, a blogger posts that “support is for those who pay for it. If you are willing to pay for support, though, you will find that you can get support for most any open source package you care to use.”

In another potshot about interoperability the post says, “Once you are in a vendor's mono culture, you are being rewarded for giving them all your money by having stuff work together. But it is definitely not more interoperable. It's just more so for components from the same vendor”

If true interoperability is what you care for, you should definitely choose open source, the post argues.

Security, a major criteria for an enterprise for any IT decision, is another concern around OS as the code is open for everyone to see, is what the OS opponents say. On the rebuttal side, then one can hear the argument being turned upside down saying that open source spreads the code wider and so it allows a broader lens to debug and inspect the code. Also it spreads development responsibility.

The arguments waft around. But it's interesting to see numbers stirring things around too.

According to a study last year from the Standish Group called Trends in Open Source, open source has made a wound worth $60 billion already in the boxing ring of real market numbers, as reckoned from the losses of proprietary software makers.

While to it is only six per cent of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually, it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software companies, said the study. These losses were disproportionate to the actual spend on open-source software, which is a mere six per cent of an estimated worldwide spend of $1 trillion per year.

The researchers put this difference down to the fact that a large proportion of open source isn't paid for, an intended result of the open-source licensing structure. With the release of the report, Standish Group chairman Jim Johnson said that open-source software is raising havoc throughout the software market. “It is the ultimate in disruptive technology," he said.

The study, which was the result of five years of research, stated that if open-source products and services were calculated at commercial prices, open source as a whole would be equivalent to the largest software company in the world, with revenues exceeding the combined income of Microsoft, Oracle and Computer Associates. The Standish Group found that 11 per cent of all new commercial software requirements are satisfied by open-source solutions and components.