Common Misconceptions about Open Source Software

I have talked to quite a few people in IT about open source and there are some common misconceptions that I run into. 

1. The first is that open source is only a small part of the software industry. 

The last time I looked there were about 100,000 projects hosted by Source Forge, which is only one of many sites hosting open source projects.  About 70% of the world's web sites run the Apache Foundation's web server software.  I saw a statistic recently that most of the Fortune 500 companies have deployed open source software, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python, Sendmail, and others.  As another example, the latest data from IDC show that worldwide server revenue for Linux servers was $5.7 billion in 2005, a 20.8% increase year over year.   (Interestingly. this represents the 14th consecutive quarter of double digit growth for Linux servers.)

2. Another common misconception is that the opposite of open source software is commercial software. 

The reality is that there are two types of commercial software, open source and closed source (sometime called proprietary).  Many commercial companies base their business entirely around open source software.  Commercial open source companies include Red Hat, Sleepycat, and MySQL, which are internationally well-known examples.  In the geospatial realm, DMSolutions is an example of a company that has based a very successful business entirely around open source geospatial software.   Some companies support both closed and open source software, for example,  Novell (who acquired SUSE), Oracle (who just acquired  Innodb  and Sleepycat), Sun ( who sell Star Office which is based on Open Office), IBM (who distribute Apache web server and Eclipse), Autodesk (who will sell MapGuide Enterprise which is based on MapGuide Open Source), and others.

3. Also common is the misconception that all open source projects are comprised of volunteers working at home in the evenings or weekends.  The implication of this is that the quality of open source software is not up to the standards of closed source software.

At the last MapServer User Meeting in Minneapolis, Dirk-willem van Gulik, President of the Apache Foundation presented a fascinating overview of the Apache Foundation.  If my memory serves, one of the things he mentioned that stuck in my mind is that of the more than 1000 Apache committers (developers who can create and modify Apache code), only one of them is a volunteer.  The rest are full-time developers employed by major corporations to work full or part-time on Apache.  In the geospatial arena Autodesk's contribution to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation was developed, and will continue to be maintained, by full-time, professional Autodesk developers.

With respect to quality, as I alluded to earlier, many of the world's major corporations have deployed open source software.  Open source proponents like Eric Raymond argue plausibly that open source is capable of achieving higher standards of quality because more developers look at the code.  The reality is that, like closed source software, you have to assess each open source project or product based on its own merits.

A simple way to summarize the situation is that the commercial software industry uses two models, closed and open source, and that both play an important role in delivering solutions to the IT industry.  Some software companies prefer the closed source model, some the open, and some rely on both.

 

Comments

[Geospatial guru in Alberta]

Nice article.

In my experience it all boils down to the FUD factor - fear and uncertainty. People commonly have a perception that if something is free there must be something wrong with it.

Also in the GIS community, people are use to one platform (paying lots of money for poor interoperability and complete dependence on a vendor) and these same people also form major allegiances to this platform (this forces them to put their blinders on) and are afraid to change for many reasons:
- social
- political
- perception

The one aspect that most people do not realize that open source software is contained in almost all proprietary or closed software packages. For example, ArcGIS and Autodesk Map use the Independent JPEG Group’s open source and free JPEG image compression libraries. Google, a tool everyone uses almost every day in their daily tasks is built almost entirely using open source technologies, the list goes on and on.

Some nice resources are:

The Myths of Open Source
http://www.cio.com/archive/030104/open.html

An excellent book that covers the open source movement and what it really means
Innovation Happens Elsewhere.doc
http://dreamsongs.com/IHE/IHE.html

I find the release of MapGuide to the community ground breaking and will have major impacts on the GeoSpatial community.

A perfect example of where this all may go is to look at the eclipse foundation (http://www.eclipse.org/).