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Open Source

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Open Source: Salvation or Suicide?

OPEN SOURCE DEFINITION:
Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. Source Code
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code
The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
7. Distribution of License
The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral
No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface
HISTORY:
1980 – Usenet
With the arrival of Usenet, developers could collaborate on a worldwide level like never before and made it easy to share software
1983 – Richard Stallman starts the GNU Project
The GNU Project has resulted in a huge amount of open source software over time and gave birth to the GNU General Public License (GPL).Stallman followed up the GNU Project with the creation of the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to further support the free software community

1991 – Linus Torvalds creates Linux
Linux began in 1991 with the commencement of a personal project by a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds, to create a new free operating system kernel which acts as a basis of almost all of the main stream open source operating systems
1993 – The founding of Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American multinational software company that is engaged in providing open-source software products to the enterprise community
1994 – Development started on MySQL
Michael Widenius and David Axmark started developing MySQL in 1994 and released the first version in 1995 Over the years, MySQL has become the open source database solution of choice and is used by a huge number of companies and websites like Facebook and Wikipedia. As of 2009, there were more than 11 million MySQL installations
1996-Apache HTTP web server most popular web server software
1998 - Netscape open sourced its web browser and forms an open source community called Mozilla
2004 – Canonical released Ubuntu which became the most popular linux distribution till date..

OPEN SOURCE- SALVATION OR SUICIDE?
The case is about KMS corporation having to deal with the dilemma of whether to make the source code open source or not. This case gives an insight of what the traditional model of controlling resources to get competitive advantage lacks. For a corporation with albeit highly competent programmers it gets increasingly difficult with time to come up with dazzling upgrades. When a concept becomes bigger than the company everyone wants to be a part of the concept and there are a lot of people who can contribute to it.

How a company defines success, by the sheer amount of market size a company commands or by who the customers are or how revenue is generated. Making a decision about this is of prime importance as it can do well with whatever choice it makes as long as it understands the choices, it’s ramifications and where it wishes to reach. Apple aims to define what a great phone is and Nokia wants to be the biggest phone company which is reflected in their sales volume.

A company which feels threatened by open source can chose a middle way i.e to open the platform to a third party and add features promoting community building; Offer developmental kit and license software to firms. This allows company to manage public perception about it as it is seen as a ‘big corporate power with proprietary IP’ in the backdrop of a placard ‘fight the power’ by open source evangelists. Also it allows strategic life cycle management by judicious spacing of big upgrades.

Making the source code open source has it’s inherent advantages enabling the use of a larger talent pool which allows for faster development thus improving user satisfaction and it reduces the cost of developing software. These inherent advantages would only be realised if there is an interest from developers, without interest there wouldn’t be a critical improvements. If a company is not clear of this it can adopt a hybrid strategy i.e keep core software as proprietary but create add on modules that are open source.That way the company could see whether developers would come up with improvements faster than the company did.

Adopting open source would make development of software much easier but it would make the company more liable for ip infringement lawsuits as the parts of open source code may have the probability of being copied from someone’s proprietary code. Autozone faced the possibility of being sued by SCO group for copyright infringement involving linux. The suit alleged that the Linux version in use at the auto-parts retailer contained software copyrighted by SCO. Apart from liability, the company would suffer in allowing other companies to use it’s proprietary asset.
COMPANIES USING OPEN SOURCE APPLICATION | ORGANISATION | DESCRIPTION | Berkeley DB | Oracle Corporation | Berkeley DB (BDB) is a software library that provides a high-performance embedded database for key/value data. As of 2012, Berkeley DB is the most widely used database toolkit in the world | Java Enterprise System | Oracle Corporation | | Lotus Symphony | IBM | office suite | NetBeans | Oracle Corporation | an integrated development environment (IDE) for developing primarily with Java, but also with other languages, in particular PHP, C/C++, and HTML5. It is also an application platform framework for Java desktop applications and others | MySQL enterprise | Oracle Corporation | relational database management system (RDBMS) that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases | Oracle Solaris | Oracle Corporation | ooperating system | Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) | VMware Inc. | email server and web client | Wordpress | Wordpress Foundation | Content management system | Magento | Magento Inc. | e-commerce platform |

more.. Amazon, Google, IBM, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, McDonalds, London Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, Audi, BMW, Peugeot, Virgin America, Dreamworks

Advantages of open source users:

Lower Costs: open source software usually does not require a licensing fee and its lower cost helps small business
Easy to Manage: Can install open source software in as many locations as you want, with no need to count, track or monitor it for license compliance
Continuous, Real-time Improvement: Everyone can access the code, anyone can take the initiative to fix bugs and make it better- without having to wait for the next release
Company Independence: If the company that created the software fails, the code can still exist and evolve via its user community

Disadvantages
Not Entirely Free: Open source software can involve unanticipated implementation administration and support costs
Orphan software: some open source projects grind to a halt and die because key programmers fight and quit, or they lose interest and move on to a new project
On Your Own: Unlike with a commercial product no one in the open source community is obligated to help you answer any of your questions

Company Can Make Money with Open Source

Red Hat is the global leader in open source software solutions — and has a clear strategy in how to generate revenue. They package the popular open source operating system Linux as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and deliver it to enterprises with a promise of 10 years of support.
Red Hat CEO Said in an interview that” The functionality is a very small part of what companies are buying when they buy software, We make the power of the open source development model consumable for the enterprise in the way they're used to consuming software. We have engineering teams that track every single change — a bug fix, security enhancement, or whatever — made to Linux, and ensure our customers' mission-critical systems remain up-to-date and stable."

Paid support is one of the most common sources of revenue. For the customized version they need to pay for the service. Other professional services include quality assurance and training.
For many businesses, the decision to go open source is a way to remove all barriers to adoption. If business needs mass adoption to succeed, then open source can be an effective way to get your product into more peoples' hands. Just be sure you've got corresponding, valuable services or complementary products at the ready to monetize.

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