The march to an open source future

With the growing popularity of open source software and the subsequent cost and security benefits that are associated with it, there is every likelihood that companies and individual users will increasingly migrate from proprietary solutions.

This is the view of Inus Gouws, a senior information management (IM) consultant at software company Computer Associates Africa.

He says open source computing is becoming a practical alternative for many South African organisations, and its adoption has risen sharply in 2005, fuelled to a large extent by support from the South African government, which is intent on making open standards a non-negotiable base for information technology (IT) in the public sector.

"Government agencies and public institutions are being encouraged to use open source software to enable better service delivery to citizens by allowing it to compete on a level playing field with proprietary alternatives in government software procurement," says Gouws.

The appeal of open source software is due to the fact that the source code - the basic building blocks of the open source operating system and the many software applications that it supports - is freely available.

"That said, there is a general local misconception around the term `free software`," explains Gouws.

"While the open source code is freely available to all, and it is changeable and re-distributable, there are cost implications associated with its installation, maintenance and support.

"That said, the use of open source software can result in considerable cost savings," he says.

"The State IT Agency, for example, is driving the implementation of open source alternatives because it stands to save around R3 billion a year on licensing fees - according to quotes from agency chief information officer Mojalefa Moseki."

Gouws says some industry watchers have pegged the true cost of proprietary software to government at around R9.4 billion per annum, with support and upgrade costs included.

"Adding to the weight behind the open source movement are joint public/private sector projects designed to channel the efforts of more universities and private companies into setting up resources centres to help develop open source programming skills

"What`s more, there is a significant pool of software programming talent in South Africa that could be expanded even further with the right incentives in place," he says.

Where will this leave the multinational software companies that have traditionally been proprietary software supporters?

It is no secret that Computer Associates, one of the world`s leaders in software development, is a keen supporter of open source and has kept an eye on developments in the Linux arena.

Although not the only open source software on the market, the widespread acceptance of Linux is a fact.

CA has, for example, placed the Linux-based Ingress relational database solution at the centre of its open source strategy, to the extent that Ingres has been released to the market under the `CA Trusted Open Source Licence` banner.

Is there an opportunity for the private user - the man in the street - to save money with open source software?

"Absolutely," says Gouws. "Even at desktop level there are many open source applications making their mark, such as Ximian Evolution. This package can access MS exchange servers and has advanced groupware features, such as meeting requests, personal information management (PIM) facilitating links with Palm Pilots and other PDAs as well as Windows CE devices.

"Open Office is another package gaining in popularity because it is 99% compatible will all MS Office files."

According to Gouws, vendor independence is also a key issue.

"The number of open source reseller companies is growing exponentially," he adds. "Access to more resellers - and marketplace competition - will help users to gain increased performance at lower cost, always a key benefit for any company."