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Open source education still needed

Jacob Nthoiwa
By Jacob Nthoiwa, ITWeb journalist.
Johannesburg, 09 Nov 2010

Businesses are starting to realise that vendor-supported open source is a better alternative to proprietary solutions as it takes out the risk of 'going in yourself' open source solutions.

This is according to the general manager at the Linux Warehouse, Shannon Moodley, commenting on the results of the Open Source Survey which attracted 499 IT professionals across various sectors in SA. This survey was carried out by ITWeb in partnership with Linux Warehouse.

There is a need for more education regarding the difference between proprietary software and vendor-supported open source software, as there are disparities that clearly most businesses are not aware of, she says.

The results showed that 70% of the respondents believe that vendor-supported open source software is similar to proprietary software.

“Vendor-supported open source is similar to proprietary software in that you have enterprise support, solution certification, and technology roadmaps,” she says. However, she points out that the way these technologies are developed are vastly different with “vendor-supported open source being developed by communities and a lot more focused on open standards.

Silver lining

Despite this, Moodley says the survey shows that SA is becoming confident when it comes to adoption of open source as many organisations are seeing the value in vendor-supported open source software.

The survey shows that 32% of the respondents are not using vendor-supported open source software. However, 38% of these say they will consider it.

“This shows that SA is still behind in comparison to the rest of the world, but these results are indicative of the rising demand,” Moodley points out.

The fact that businesses says they would use vendor-supported open source software was the highlight of the survey, says Moodley. The operating system being the first, and following was databases storage applications, then back-up and recovery.

When it comes to products that organisations are using, it seems like only four products are popular being Linux, Java, Open Office, MySQL. For a better adoption there has to be knowledge of these products, acceptance and understanding, Moodley notes.

“There is definitely availability in SA, thus the increase in vendor visibility too. The results of the survey shows vendor-supported open source solutions have to be marketed better as many people are still unaware of alternatives to existing proprietary solutions,” she advises.

Customary rules

The survey also shows the majority of the respondents believe that it is important that software is fully compliant with open standards. ”This is integral to any IT environment; one cannot afford to be locked in with a specific piece of technology, methodology or even language,” Moodley says.

She says open standard makes it possible to integrate with other technologies in a standard way. “If the standard is not open, one has to guess how the integration happens,” she says, adding that this is risky in most cases.

According to her, being able to modify the source code is important to majority of respondents as opposed to having access to the object code. “Modification of the source code is a double edge sword,” she says. According to her, technicians see this as an opportunity to further code/processing efficiency.

However, from an IT management point of view, it is a “once off " benefit counterbalanced by the cost of re-applying the changes made over and over [with all the potential instability caused by change] as new versions of the product are being released.

“The cost - be it monetary - availability of skills, impact on quality or instability of maintaining the modified code over time usually far exceeds the benefits of the modifications,” Moodley points out.

It is also interesting to see where businesses are spending their budgets by glance of the results of where their priorities of IT expenditure are, says Moodley. The survey also showed all this and gave us an idea where the market is going, she adds.

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