Why Open Source?
Open source software started life as "Free Software Movement" in 1983 with the GNU project.
The goal of this project was to offer a free operating system namely "GNU Hurd".
The GNU project is still under development after so many years that some of other open source projects
such as Linux actually gained more popularity over the original GNU project.
Almost all current open source projects are licensed based on the GPL (GNU General Public License) originated from the GNU project.
The GPL allows any one to modify the source code as long as it is not redistributed outside of the organization
unless the modified source goes back to the public domain. The term "Open Source" replaced the term "Free Software" in 1998
when a group of Free/Open Software experts decided the new term is less ambiguous and more comfortable for the corporate world.
Today, there are thousands of open source applications that are free to use for individuals and companies.
Some of the well-known production-grade open source projects are Linux, Apache Web Server, Sun Java, PHP, MySql.
Benefits Of Using Open SourceCost - All the open source projects we utilize are free of royalties and license fees. For most enterprise software projects, the cost of commercial software license fees is usually 30-50% of the total project cost, the other 50-70% being customization, training and etc. All consulting firms get commissions with their software sales therefore they really want customers like you to spend part of your budget for software purchases. We have no interest in selling any commercial software to our customers because we only offer free open source software. By simply going with open source, you have already saved 30-50% on your budget.Customizability - All open source software can be easily customized based on customer's requirements due to the availability of the source code. Every company has different operational processes and it is very common an enterprise software package needs to be heavily modified before production deployment. Open source software has a big advantage over commercial software when it comes to customization. Flexibility and Freedom - Most commercial solutions are closed systems with proprietary standards that force their customers to be locked-in with the commercial vendors. With open source, companies are never locked-in with any specific vendor or system. Almost all open source projects use open standards and the source code has to be available in order to be qualified as open source. All our customers get a copy of the source code for their projects. Our customers are in no way locked-in with our company because by having all the source code, the customers always have the option of working with a different open source solutions provider. Support - Can your current consulting company or your IT department obtain a fix for a problem in a commercial application such as SAP within a short timeframe? Chances are, it would take a week if it is a crashing bug and your company is one of the major customers of the software vendor or it would take a month to a year otherwise. We provide all software support directly from our company. All major software problems would be examined on the very same day we received them. Most problems can be fixed within 1-2 days. Still Not Convinced?Read what people are saying about how the corporate world is getting serious with open source:Google search: open source gaining (acceptance OR traction) (corporate OR enterprise) |