3 - Open Source: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Abstract

This chapter review arguments, for and against, open source software, and other issues that are relevant. There are some differences in buying open source, because it is marketed and sold in a different way. However, there are real advantages to these products. When open source software is considered separately, compared to others, they excel in performance and in price.. And when considered together, they offer a group of integrated solutions to many common problems faced by large enterprises. In areas such as embedded devices, Web servers, engineering workstations, and large clusters, open source systems are already the market-leading choices. In other areas, such as simple application development, transactional databases, and corporate infrastructure servers, it appears to be the market leader for the next two years. In other areas, such as enterprise applications, open source is at an earlier stage and only companies wanting to show technology leadership will be deploying it today. At its best, the open source process has demonstrated an ability to catch and overtake closed code enhancements while exposing code to massive testing, leading to a great combination of customer value and reliability.