Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Open Source - The Hidden Cost
One of the arguments that open source folks make is to say, "Look, now you're free. Instead of listening to the vendor pitch, you can go and download it yourself, do your testing and choose whatever makes sense for you." But all of this ? the testing period, downloading different pieces of open source ? is time-consuming and it's not free. Yes, you can download for free, but now you need to spend somebody's time, and that's a cost, right? Depending on the skills you have, it could range from very little to a lot.
Second, open source is a Wild West. Everything runs on its own schedule, which no one can predict very well. No one is generally responsible for milestones in open source, except companies that build their business around open source, like JBoss, for example, or MySQL or SugarCRM. They're a different animal. Because most of the development is done internally, they can actually commit to milestones. But the rest of open source. ... Customers need to be aware that pieces may change. You may be relying on a release that is coming with features that you're expecting, and it's not coming. When it will come, you don't know, and that may cost you money
Finally, to integrate different open source pieces, you need expertise. If you have problems and need someone to look at the source code itself, you need to have very qualified people doing it. ... Plus, after you integrate open source, then what? Think about new releases. In a vendor environment, it's still a pain, but it's manageable. IBM can come to you and say, "We're moving from version X to version Y, here's the procedure," etc. In open source, you're on your own. If you're using open source in production applications, [the move] may affect your production ...
All of this taken together should be taken into account. Don't get me wrong. We're for open source. We think it's great from an enterprise perspective; it's going to save a significant amount of money. But you're not going to drive a car if you have no idea how to do it, right? It's the same with open source. If you understand how to use it, how to leverage it, how it's going to be cost-efficient for you, then it [works].
Source: Interview with Fima Katz, CEO and founder, and Amy Cole, chief marketing officer, of Exadel, Inc. The company offers software, services and support that enable clients to create mission-critical applications based on open source technology
Second, open source is a Wild West. Everything runs on its own schedule, which no one can predict very well. No one is generally responsible for milestones in open source, except companies that build their business around open source, like JBoss, for example, or MySQL or SugarCRM. They're a different animal. Because most of the development is done internally, they can actually commit to milestones. But the rest of open source. ... Customers need to be aware that pieces may change. You may be relying on a release that is coming with features that you're expecting, and it's not coming. When it will come, you don't know, and that may cost you money
Finally, to integrate different open source pieces, you need expertise. If you have problems and need someone to look at the source code itself, you need to have very qualified people doing it. ... Plus, after you integrate open source, then what? Think about new releases. In a vendor environment, it's still a pain, but it's manageable. IBM can come to you and say, "We're moving from version X to version Y, here's the procedure," etc. In open source, you're on your own. If you're using open source in production applications, [the move] may affect your production ...
All of this taken together should be taken into account. Don't get me wrong. We're for open source. We think it's great from an enterprise perspective; it's going to save a significant amount of money. But you're not going to drive a car if you have no idea how to do it, right? It's the same with open source. If you understand how to use it, how to leverage it, how it's going to be cost-efficient for you, then it [works].
Source: Interview with Fima Katz, CEO and founder, and Amy Cole, chief marketing officer, of Exadel, Inc. The company offers software, services and support that enable clients to create mission-critical applications based on open source technology
# posted by David Low @ 5:45 PM 
