The three-day Open Source Impact 2006 conference kicked off this morning with a keynote address charting the steps in migrating from proprietary to open source software (OSS).
Obsidian Systems MD, Muggie van Staden, who gave the address, said: "Open source gives you the ability to change the software to suit your organisation."
If applications, architectures and environments work well, however, migration should not be considered, he cautioned.
Preparation
Everyone in the organisation needs to know where the company is heading with migration strategies, and how it plans to get there, Van Staden emphasised. "Having strategic direction and strategic timing is important."
He advised organisations considering migration to share knowledge and speak to others who have already migrated, especially in the areas of hardware compatibility, application compatibility and how best to educate and prepare users.
"It is key for technical staff to be trained in OSS - since they are the ones that will be using it and taking it forward," he said.
Going through a pilot process is a necessary step, he said, adding: "The only way to ensure compatibility is to test it."
Migrating in distinct steps is often an effective strategy, Van Staden noted. He advised beginning with an OSS browser, such as Firefox (which can be used in both proprietary and OSS environments), then adopting an OSS office suite, before moving to a complete Linux environment.
Finally, he advised against migrating to "something that doesn`t have an open standard".
Pervasive OSS
Outlining OSS`s pervasiveness, Van Staden said 70% of the Web is built on the Apache Web server, an open source application.
"Open source gives you the freedom to use different hardware architectures, to access source code and alter it, and to benefit from the OSS community`s development models."
The Open Source Impact 2006 conference, which runs until Friday, will investigate issues of licensing, migration, future OSS trends, Linux skills, OSS risk assessment and mobile workforces.
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