Line fades between open source and proprietary systems
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 4/1/2006 12:00:00 AM MST
Proprietary software vendors are taking a more active role in the open-source movement. In February, Oracle bought Sleepycat,maker of Berkeley DB, a popular open-source embedded database; and SugarCRM released its open-source Sugar Suite 4.5 under the Microsoft Community License, whereby Microsoft shares source code with customers and partners.
Such developments are raising fears in the open-source community about whether the real strategy of the proprietary Goliaths is to kill their small open-source competitors.
SAP VP Peter Graf seemed to confirm their suspicions when he suggested at the Open Source Business Conference that most open-source application vendors were "too immature" to survive over the long term and would fall victim to consolidation.
But this either/or view doesn't reflect reality, says Scott Handy, IBM's VP of Linux and open source. "We have found a strong synergy [between open-source and proprietary software]. When you can share development expense and collaborative innovation, you get a lot out of it," he says.
The open-source model is "incredibly productive," he adds, citing the "double benefit" that comes from building to open-source standards. IBM takes the resources it saves by sharing development costs and uses them to build higher-value products—which IBM sells to users—that run on the Linux open-source operating system.
IBM uses a blend of open-source and proprietary technology in its own operations. Its semiconductor manufacturing operation in Fishkill, N.Y., runs several proprietary components—IBM's own DB2 database, WebSphere application server, and SiView semiconductor production-control system—on top of a mix of Linux and IBM AIX operating systems.
This combo strategy isn't just an IBM phenomenon. Microsoft says 35 percent of SugarCRM users run that application on Windows, and many users run both Linux and Windows on the same machines.
While vendors may view open source as a mixed blessing, customers are ready to embrace it.
"Vendors have a love-hate relationship with open source, but customers want it," says Kathy Quirk, research manager at Wellesley, Mass.-based Nucleus Research. Not only does open source mean lower initial costs, but it also leads to vendor independence and more control, giving companies the ability to customize systems as they see fit.
However, users need to be careful when they jump on the open-source bandwagon. It's not for every use, or every company.
"You have to analyze carefully what open-source projects will succeed," warns Handy. "People have to be interested in it. It's the health of the community around the project that determines whether it succeeds."
Quirk says open-source users also need to be wary of the cost of "free" software. "The biggest thing is to look where the expense will fall," she says. "It's not the licensing, but the ongoing support cost. Do you have people on staff to support this? How much will that cost?"
In spite of these caveats, Quirk predicts open-source applications are here to stay. "People will have to devote extra time on the development side, but it's a trade-off they are willing to make," she says.
An open question
03/01/2005Many a conflicting priority
07/01/2005
