Table of Contents
Open source software
A historical perspectiveFree software versus Open source software
Free software Foundation and free software
Free Software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is Software which, once obtained, can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed. It is often made available online without charge or offline for the cost of distribution. The free software movement began in 1985 when the FSF was founded primarily to support the GNU project.
Open Source Initiative
Over the years, people have tried to come up with a term for free software that does not have the ambiguity problem between having-freedom and zero-cost. The most well known alternative is "Open Source Software". The Open Source movement has started in 1998 when Netscape Communication Corporation decided to release the source code for Netscape Navigator.
Open-source software has freely available source code, and such access to the source code allows anybody to modify the software or create a new version of it as well as anybody can package the software and sell it. Although, the term open source commonly alludes to any software that has publicly available source code, not all publicly available source code meets open source standards. Much of such software does not allow users to distribute their modifications, restricts commercial usage, or otherwise restricts users’ right. The Open Source Definition specifies ten conditions to determine whether or not a software license can be considered open source.
Open source versus free software
The FSF's free software definition is more restrictive than the Open Source Definition; as a consequence of this, free software is open source, but open-source software may or may not be "free". In practice, nearly all open-source licenses also satisfy the FSF's free software definition, and the difference is more a matter of philosophical emphasis. Software distributed under both the GPL and BSD licenses is considered both free and open-source.
Open-source licenses define the privileges and restrictions a licensor must follow in order to use, modify or redistribute the open source software. Such licenses may have additional restrictions such as a requirement to preserve the name of the authors and the copyright statement within the code. Examples of open source licenses include BSD license, BSD license, GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, MIT License, Apache License and Mozilla Public License.
The open source business models The open source value proposition
A survey by Computer Economics indicates that open source is more valued for giving reduced dependence on vendors (44%) than lower total cost of ownership (22%). Such dependence includes reliance on the vendor for maintenance and support and the necessity for the buyer to accept version upgrades that the buyer may not need or want. In contrast, there is no forced upgrade cycle with open source. Older versions of open source products continue to be supported through the open source community and third party support providers as long as there is demand in the marketplace for such support.
The survey indicates that vendors of proprietary software are missing the mark when they argue that open source software has a higher total cost of ownership, is less secure, or higher risk in terms of ongoing support. These factors, although important, are not the key concern of software buyers. The key appeal of open source software is that it avoids vendor lock-in and gives buyers the freedom to choose what to do and when to do it.
For software buyers, the best strategy is to consider mature and established open source products as well as proprietary software products that adhere to open standards. In this way, buyers can choose the best software product for the job, knowing that the value of their investment will be preserved without locking the organization in to a single vendor solution.
The revenue models for open source software companies Dual Licensing
In the dual licensing model followed by companies like MySQL, software is available free with a restrictive GPL license, and available for a small fee with a less restrictive commercial license. There are other companies like SourceFire – which developed a network intrusion detection system – that offer an upgrade to the free version of the product for a fee.
Professional Open source – subscription / support model
The professional open source model has been driven a compelling customer demand for accountability and guaranteed response time that result from a paid support. In particular, the demand for middleware as open source has been increasing tremendously. The greatest beneficiaries have been independent software vendors (ISVs) who benefit from high quality, royalty free platforms.
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