About Open Source Software

As a business customer, your productivity depends on software which has sufficient features to be useful, and performs its functions as advertised. Many people's initial reaction on hearing about open source software is that it is neither of these. But we hope that the following will illustrate that "Open Source" does not equate to "free" nor to "low quality".

There are now basically two kinds of open source software available in the market, traditional software from industry that has been opened up; and a new breed of software that mainly arises from a community of users who have a need in common.

Industry-Supported Open Source Software

Many software vendors are now switching to a model whereby they make available the source code to their software whilst continuing to charge licence fees and offer maintenance contracts.

This model works because it allows customers to inspect their code. Savvy customers assist in the process of discovering bugs, hence improving value for money for all end users. At the same time, the manufacturer continues to provide support services to assure ongoing software quality.

Community-Supported Open Source Software

In order to attract an even wider range of software specialists who can point out bugs, many software vendors have made available "free" versions of their open source software. Office suites such as Sun's OpenOffice and community-supported Linux distributions such as Fedora fall into this category.

Because of the much wider body of users, there is a correspondingly larger rate of bug detection and fixing. And with licencing costs reduced to zero, customers will have room in their budget to take advantage of installation and training services, thereby increasing the value for money they can achieve.