Open Source - An Overview

Pia Smith

President of Linux Australia

http://linux.org.au

pia@linux.org.au

Open Source

Development Methodology

Who, how, where and why?

Size, capacity, advantages and disadvantages

Used for many projects worldwide, eg:

Linux

Open Office

Interest to Businesses

Why would a business switch to an Open Source solution?

Advantages and disadvantages

Development Methodology
Advantages

More Eyes

More efficient debugging process

Significant emphasis on security

Stability and more efficient development

Compliance with Open and defined standards

Corporate Sponsorship (Sun, Novell, IBM)

Single accessible point of contact per project

“Release early, Release often” in controlled manner -> GNOME

Coordination of a large, highly skilled community of people who do this for fun

The Community

Highly skilled, highly organised & dedicated

Regular conferences

Shared knowledge

Sourceforge.net = 746,000 registered users

Hundreds of self-hosted projects not on it

Many Volunteers

No direct control

“Herding Cats”

Functionality and features are often developer driven rather than user driven (becoming less so)

Development Methodology
Disadvantages

Economic and strategic freedom

Hardware

Software

Planning schedule

Development

Support (in-house)

Interest to Businesses
Advantages

Hardware

Do not require high end technology

Software

Flexible products

No licences to track

No chance of prosecution, no audits

Easier software rollouts

Do not have to commit to EULA (security, functionality, client access, unknown 'upgrades')

Planning Schedule

No forced upgrades

Do not have to wait or depend on one vendor

Patches are developed quickly, available instantly

Interest to Businesses
Advantages

Interest to Businesses
Advantages

Development

Software can't be 'deep-sixed'

Cost of development heavily reduced

Employ a small number of developers for specifics -> benefits of FOSS development methodology and many unpaid developers work

Support

Worldwide community

Online 24/7

Excellent documentation, in many languages

Paid support available

Accessibility features

Interest to Businesses
Disadvantages

Vendor support

Can't harbour code

Accountability, although...

“...provide the Product and support services (if any) AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, and hereby disclaim all other warranties and conditions” - XP Pro EULA

“Except when otherwise stated in writing the copyright holders and/or other parties provide the program “as is” without any warranty of any kind” - GPL

Open Source

Education

LPI http://www.linux.org.au

URLs

http://www.linux.org.au

http://proprietary.clendons.co.nz/licenses/eula/

http://gnome.org/

http://WSIS.org

pia@linux.org.au or ctte@linux.org.au

Questions?

2003-12-03T17:56:31