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April 5, 2003

Free and Clear?

Open source code can save you licensing fees in your strategic IT project, but the story doesn't end there

by Sanjay Murthi

Continued from Page 1

On the other hand, hiring employees skilled in supporting open source solutions can be expensive and time consuming because few candidates have worked on large installations many years. It's a lot easier to find an experienced Solaris administrator than an experienced Linux administrator, and fewer database administrators can troubleshoot issues with a MySQL database than an Oracle database.

Legal issues. Another thing that can make organizations uncomfortable is the impact of open source code licensing policies. Some of these licenses require that any intellectual property built on the specific open source product also be freely available. This requirement can trip-up organizations, especially if they plan to sell services based on these applications. Alternatively, your organization may wish to share a successful internal application with partners, violating open source licensing restrictions. Therefore, it's crucial that managers review such licensing policies — with legal counsel, if necessary — to ensure that these issues don't emerge at a later date. Imagine being forced to share source code of a core business solution with a competitor because of an implied contractual obligation due to modifying or using an open source product!

Scalability of the solutions. Many open source products have proven themselves in large enterprise applications, but many others have not. For example Linux and the Apache Web server have worked well at the enterprise level. Others, like many open source databases, don't have a history of supporting large, critical enterprise applications. Many open source solutions evolved from smaller, single-user or departmental applications. Plus, many open source code contributors may not have much experience writing code for highly utilized, resource-intensive applications.

The perception exists that an open source product must be inherently better because anyone can see the code and find possible bugs and problems. This view is valid to some extent, but when a product has millions of lines of code, there's a strong possibility that few pairs of eyes have seen all of it. However, popular, well-regarded applications such as Apache, Linux, and FreeBSD are worth investigating because they've been used extensively by many large organizations and thereby have evolved significantly with many bugs having been discovered and removed.

Stability of the open source community. For some business applications, many open source products may be available, so your selection should be based partly on their maturity and community support. Open source projects can atrophy if community interest isn't sustained. In such cases, applications built using these products become very vulnerable because effective enhancements and support are limited. (However, on the positive side, some organizations will have the source code for the open source products, so enhancements are still possible even if the open source product's community has dissolved.)

It's also important to consider availability of support and speed of bug fixes. Many communities respond to problems fast and provide fixes; others may take much longer.

Customer requirements. If these applications are being made available to customers, you may need to make special considerations. At a software company I worked with recently, customers were very uncomfortable about using open source solutions. The company finally had to rebuild its products using commercial products. This feeling will probably change as more and more open source products prove their worth. However, it is an issue to consider, especially in more regulated industries such as banking, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, where liability due to software faults is especially risky.

Open Up

In light of these points, you can see that open source solutions indeed have a place in strategic business applications. However, in the same manner that you evaluate commercial solutions, you should also diligently evaluate open source technology. The cost of incorrect decisions can be very large and significantly offset any savings based on licensing costs.

In a nutshell, savings on licensing costs shouldn't be the final guide on what product to use. Implementation and support costs frequently dwarf such fees. The true value of using open source lies with the avoidance of vendor lock-in, reliance on products that may support standards better or will become the standard, access to source code, and access to a wide support network. In conclusion, one can say that many open source solutions deserve a serious look when building strategic applications.

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In the future, more open source solutions will become available and popular enough to warrant use. However, as mentioned previously, savings based on software licenses shouldn't be the main criteria in selecting them. In most cases, licensing costs are only a small part of implementation and ongoing support costs.

Sanjay Murthi [smurthi@smglobal.com] is president of SMGlobal Inc. He has more than 15 years of experience in the software industry. He helps companies improve the success of software projects and achieve results at less cost with greater efficiency and quality.