Slide Comments

This document contains notes to go along with the presentation. It will undergo changes as needed. These are notes and may not make sense to everyone. As changes are made hopefully the presentation will start to make more sense.
Why businesses should run OSS
1: BIND is the software behind 90% of the DNS's on the internet

2: Apache is the most commonly deployed webserver on the planet, it also serves more pages per installation then competing proprietary webservers.

3: A recent study of proprietary and open source TCP/IP stacks revealed that the OSS stacks were faster and more stable.

4: Even before the linux kernel hit version 1.0 (it is now version 2.5.??) people had linux installations which had uptimes of over 1 year. Some of these installations were running hard hit webservers.

5: The Mozilla web browser is strong competitor to Internet Explorer. It has unique features like tabbed browsing and the ability to deactivate various annoying Javascript features like pop-up windows.
More Reasons Businesses Should Run OSS

Patches, Upgrades, and Troubleshooting all can cost money. They also cost time as you must sometimes wait for the problems to be resolved, and if your issues aren't high priority you have to wait.

No Customization: If the software doesn't do exactly what you want you have no recourse but to wait for it to be changed. With OSS you can have local talent, hired talent, or a group of engineers interested in solving your problem work to add the features you need. This also applies to patches and bugs.

Customer Service: Although your software often comes with a short period of free customer service, after a month or two you have to pay for that service. The Linux community won an award for customer service in 200? for how the community helped users solve technical issues. Not only is the service award winning, it is free.

Vendor Lock In: So you've adopted MS Word. Your company now has 8 million Word files floating around. If you decide that you want to switch Word Processors it becomes difficult as Word uses proprietary file formats. OSS usually stores information using open standards so you can easily switch between software packages. Even if it doesn't the code to read and write these files is open so people can (and do) write code to transfer between varying formats.

Compatibility: Similar to vendor lock-in, but proprietary software written by different companies often doesn't work very well together. This is because they don't write to open standards and don't want interoperability. With OSS if you like OpenOffice and I like AbiWord we can still work on the same documents without pain.

Scalability: After MS acquired Hotmail they tried to transfer the web-based email from Unix to Windows. They tried for years. Their software could not handle the amount of traffic and storage that Hotmail had been using for years. It wasn't until Windows 2000 that they finally made the switch. Of course even as their software has improved so has the *nix platforms.

Bugs: One of the cornerstones of the Open Source Movement is that "Many Eyes make bugs shallow". This means that when you have many people reporting bugs, submitting fixes, and reading code bugs are found quickly. Proprietary software is sometimes released with fatal bugs as in this story

OSS on the Server

Designed by technical people for technical people/tasks: Users don't care about what webserver they are hitting .. they just want the pages. If Apache is designed by a sysadmin for a sysadmin, then it is probably the better choice.

Innovative: Lots of new features created by people who have heavily used a software product are added. SQUID, Apache, etc. took the lead cause they had lots of useful features not found elsewhere

Ease of administration: Close integration with OSS tools allows people with a high amount of knowledge to quickly work on software. Proprietary products often hide lots of features from the user and try to administrate via Wizards and GUIs which are targeted towards novices and often prove a hindrance for experts

Bug Fixes/Reporting/Patching: Can fix the bugs yourself, or find others who know how to fix bugs. Don't have to rely on a vendor to do the work and decide to release the code, plus they may not prioritize you bug

OSS on the Desktop
Benefits

Product feature bloat: Don't use a large % of Word's capabilities so don't need a achieving penetration, especially in business product which does 100% of what word does .. just 80%

Not locked onto a platform: Don't like to retrain for software so you want software to run on as many platforms as possible

Standards Compliant: OSS tends to write to implement standards which cannot be said for many proprietary products. If you write to standards then you will find that software, files, hardware etc. "just work". VINES protocol was an attempt to create a proprietary network protocol. It eventually failed.

Cross Functional: An offshoot of Standards Compliant, cross functional means that if you like AbiWord and someone else likes OpenOffice they can read each others files .. you are not forced to do everything one way.

Customizable: While most individual users won't be customizing their software to do anything, by participating in a community they can more directly encourage people to add features/fix bugs that they want

Security/Privacy: OSS is open from the start, and often not as dependent on corporate entities. The openness helps to guarantee secure design (no security through obscurity) and people can report on spyware features, or other publishing/storing of private data.

Customer Service: The linux community (meaning the aggregation of news sites, message boards, and mailing lists won a customer service award in the year 2001

Problems

Retraining: The cost of training people to switch from Win 2000 to Win XP achieving penetration, especially in businessesXP is high achieving penetration, especially in businesses.. what about Win 2000 to Linux

Not as User Friendly: Microsoft has more interaction with novice users then the OSS community and they target those users. This results in a lack of some functionality which end users like, but aren't a high priority to the engineers. As more novice users move to the platform a community will develop to better meet their needs.

Too Much Software: OSS people like to "roll their own" so there is a lot of competing software. This results in the development being spread around. It also contributes to innovation and healthy competition, but it saps brain power too. Individuals have trouble picking between 2 Desktop Environs, 50 Window Managers, 100 editors, and 150 cd-burning programs. This is why distributions are an important business

Lack of MS Exchange type application: Most desktop users want an office suite (OpenOffice), a web browser (Mozilla), a chat program (Gaim), some games, a media player (XMMS and MPlayer) and an email client/personal information manager (Evolution). Businesses want them to share a common backend (like Exchange). OSS does not offer this yet, but with the funding of projects like Chandler this will change.

Why OSS for Suppliers
Development Benefits

Supporting Software Investment can always equal zero: Developing for the linux platform, or cross platform, means that companies can use the OSS tools which are always available for free. While software is pretty much free in Armenia anyways, if you grow you may find that someone comes to do a license evaluation

Decreased Cost of Hardware Investment: Hardware is cheap, but just how cheap is it? OSS software runs well on older hardware while the newest version of Windows required many people to upgrade their 2 year old hardware

Free Developers: Developers are a major cost when writing code. By building an online community you get free bug testers, enhancements, new features. You can also hire people from inside the community to work for your company saving you training and ramp up time

Many Eyes Make Bugs Shallow: QA work annoys most developers, and it's impossible to catch all your bugs (if the software is complex). Therefore having lots of people using your software means that bugs are found quickly and reported efficiently stabilizing your product faster

Design and Security Review: As you have a wide base of people you can get feedback on your Design and your security features .. this means that you can catch flaws early when they are easy to fix.

Marketing Benefits

Word of mouth: As interest in your project grows you will find people recommending your org. to their companies .. free marketing

International Attention on Open Source: Lots of international attention for Open Source, ride the tide IBM, international governments etc

Code is forever: If they have the source code then they are protected against any business decisions you make. MS just stopped supporting Win98, what if you won't/can't upgrade to Win2k .. you are stuck with an unsupportable product. As all good companies are "risk averse" they are interested in having a product they can fix themselves (or which will be fixed by other like minded individuals).

Security: Open Source code is recognized as being more secure in basic design then it's proprietary counterparts. It can't rely on Security through Obscurity

Proprietary Problems

Licenses are hard to write

Enforcement of licenses is almost impossible in most parts of the world (including the US)

If you want to compete in the big markets as a proprietary company there is a lot of competition: Until you reach a critical mass of users, or spend a lot on marketing .. people are going to use the more familiar name even if your product is better. Open Source lets you stand out amongst the crowd.

OSS in Armenia

Licenses don't work here: Software is free .. so charging for it won't get you any money

Aid Community: If you want to start a project then you may want to seek money from the AID community. They are very interested in funding Open Source projects as it helps their money count for every country not just the one they are trying to help

Publicity: Participating in projects and starting projects can make your name known. A programmer in Croatia wanted to browse the web but found it difficult with his incosistent connection. He wrote a little utility called wget to allow him to copy web pages over inconsistent connections. People all over the world use this utility now. He also helped work on Xemacs and his work on this project netted him a free trip to Japan (all expenses paid) to speak at a conference. This body of work also helped him to land a high paying programming job in Germany.

Experience: Having an education is great, having a body of work is better. Show off your skills

Related Jobs: Companies are always looking for ways to get work done cheaply. If you contribute to a worthy project and they need someone to work on it they may pay for your services

Diaspora: OSA and EIF are both backing this project and they have connections with Armenians abroad who may be able to attract business to you

Big Companies will ignore Armenian needs: Armenia is a small market, an Armenian version of Windows is never going to come out. If you adopt OSS people can start to work Armenianize their software.

There are currently no notes for this slide.

tristancohen@yahoo.com

$Id: slide-comments.html,v 1.2 2003/05/05 07:45:59 tristan Exp $