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Open source software - bigger than you think

By Sean Bacher, ITWeb contributor.
Johannesburg, 01 Oct 2014

A 20 years or so ago, when Windows was thought of as the be-all and end-all of desktop operating systems, a new operating system was being developed. It was called Linux, and was designed to be an easier-to-use version of Unix.

What is more, it was something the computing industry rarely heard of - free.

Now, some time later, Linux is a very popular open source desktop operating system and it and other open source software is found in one form or another in various IT environments.

"In fact, the future of the software market is open source, making many proprietary programs archaic," says Jan Wildeboer, Red Hat's EMEA Evangelist. "Open solutions are leading innovation and offer possibilities that were not available in the past. All new innovations are coming from the open source world," he says.

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The IT centre is no longer just a tool a company uses to run its day-to-day business, but is becoming a crucial aspect of the company. However, many IT departments are driven by "do more with less", where they see a business' IT infrastructure as an unnecessary cost. "Internationally, this is beginning to change as businesses see IT opening doors to new possibilities and this is where open source will play a huge role, as it brings numerous benefits with it in terms of its scalability, ease of use and easy customisation."

The abovementioned benefits, along with many others, of open source can be attributed to the open source community. Wildeboer describes it not so much as a service organisation, but more of a quid-pro-quo world. "When you are a part of the open source community you can't eat from the table without bringing something to it." The various open communities around the world want participation from developers as this helps them develop and deploy new patches, drivers and modules more rapidly.

The open source community has also played a big role in bringing Linux flavours like Red Hat to the fore due to the support that comes with the package and its ease of installation. In the beginning, Red Had was predominantly text-based, meaning the graphical user interface was not something its users paid much attention to. This scared the non-technical users into using graphical user interface operating systems with their point-and-click approach. When users first started using Red Hat, they also had the problem of not having the correct hardware drivers, and having to sift through community bulletin boards until they found the correct driver. "However, thanks to the open source community this has changed. Red Hat now has a complete graphical user interface and users have access to a vast range of drivers and a great support community should they get stuck," says Wildeboer.

Bigger than you think

Open source and the open source community is bigger than many people think. Wildeboer says the entire financial world runs on open source products. "The stock market is also already there, with many telecoms companies starting to make the move. Also, we are not just seeing open source on desktops, but also in specialised devices like DSL routers and modems," he says.

This is just one of the messages Wildeboer hopes to get across at the Enterprise Open Source - Meet the Stack conference this month.

Wildeboer will deliver the keynote address for the Enterprise Open Source - Meet the Stack conference. He is an experienced speaker and lobbyist for open source, open innovation, community and governance. With a solid technical background, and having gained experience on various open source projects before joining Red Hat as a Pre-Sales Consultant, he has helped numerous Red Hat customers and governments to embrace "The Open Source Way". He was involved in the European fight against software patents, the "war" on document standards and is widely known as a pragmatic and convincing spokesperson not only for Red Hat, but for open innovation in general.

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Sean Bacher
Praxis