Austin Holdsworth

London, UK.

Freelance Consultant

There's a whole stack of generalisations here across a broad spectrum of choices and that's why I don't necessarily agree with its conclusions.

Open source refers to the licence and terms of use for any given piece of software. Not necersarily its heritage and its value as an enterprise platform.

Most well-known and mature open source applications come with optional commercial support from companies with credible means. Spanning areas such as CRM, ERP, RDBMS, document/content management, sales automation, desktop OS, thin client OS, storage OS, multimedia production, codec, remote access, software developments suites - to name a few.

In a commercial decision making process, the CIO should apply the same due diligence to open source software selection as to closed source. Examine the vendor, the credibility of a long-term support arrangement, skills in the marketplace, training etc.

Our CIO might be surprised to find that many offerings are surprisingly attractive for a commercial enterprise, and having unfettered access to the source code brings new opportunities to bring some of the bespoke work in-house and at low cost.

Not all open source software is the result of a back-bedroom programming project by enthusiastic computer studies student. Some applications are almost entirely commercially derived. It’s just that the licence is better.