OSS for companies: Open Source Applications in companies

II-1.1 Open Source Applications in companies

All the graphics in this report have been taken from: http://www.ioug.org/IOUG_Open_Source_07.pdf

According to this report in 2006, companies which are running with a majority of Open Source applications is around 9%.In 2007 this percentage is around 13%.

A very simple and candid(because we just have two years to judge) analysis let make us say that there is a growth of open source applications inside companies.

According to this tab it is interesting to see that only 1% of large companies are running more than 50% of their applications under Open source whereas for small companies this percentage is around 24%

Another data is interesting: 43% of large companies are using between 1 to 9% of Open Source applications.

The analysis of these data give us some information.

1^st :There is good chance that Large companies recognized the fact that Open Source applications are a cost saving.

But don't trust them enough to make them running their all computer park.

On the other hand small companies seem recognize that equiping the company with Open source applications is a huge cost saving.

What can be interesting is to understand why there is such a big gap?

OSS for companies: What his today the place of Open Source solutions in companies?

II- OPEN SOURCE SOLUTIONS FOR COMPANIES


II-1 What his today the place of Open Source solutions in companies?


It is not that easy to evaluate with precision what is today the world use of Open Source solutions.However a lot of market research have been made on this topic by taking a panel of hundreds of companies.Most of the results of these different panel are coherent with each other
In this report I took as a panel the work done by the IOUG (Independant Oracle Users Group).They made a recent survey in 2007 .This survey takes is based on 226 companies from small and medium to large companies.

OSS for companies: Brief history of the open source phenomenon

I-3 Brief history of the open source phenomenon

When computer age began the computer science was one of the sciences in which researchers shared freely the source code of their programs.

In the early 80ies this tacit rule of knowledge sharing changed.Editors began to sell their first software without distributing the source code: "Proprietary software" for example any commercial software such as Microsoft Windows.

So before the 80ies everything was Open Source.The open source phenomenon that we are hearing everyday has nothing of a new topic or a revolution.

Open Source as we said before was the beginning of the computer software.

Open Source is before all a way of thinking, a philosophy as we are going to discover it.People which are making open source software believe that everybody has something to win by making that kind of solutions.

The copyleft is a good logo of this state of mind:

It clearly shows his opposition to the copyright.

Copyleft:a legal instrument that requires those who pass on a program to include the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the code; the code and the freedoms become legally inseparable.

OSS for companies: Open Source definition

I-2 Open Source definition

There are a lot of definitions about Open Source.The best and the easiest definition I found was the one I made by crossing some different sources of information.

This definition cannot be well done without the describing what we call the "source code".
The source code is the intelligible and understandable version by a human being of a computer programme.
This source code is written in a language called "programmation",known by programmers.It described with words and formulas how the software is precisely running.This source code is not directly usable by the computer, it is therefore translated in a machine code or executable code.

Because now we know what is the source code we can easily explain what "Open Source" means.

Open Source definition: the code source of the software is available to users.

As a comparison if the Open Source software was a dish you could know how it has been made(his composition in fact).

The Open Source definition includes also the possibility of modifying,improving and redistributing it.

The opposite of an open source software is a proprietary sofwtare.

Proprietary software is a computer software with restrictions on copying and modifying placed on it by the creator or distributor.

I think you understood that as a comparison if a proprietary software was a cooked dish , it would be impossible to know its composition,neither the way it had been cooked.And it would be forbidden to try to guess.Impossible to improve the way it had been made, and forbidden to give a piece of it to your friend who is starving to death.

OSS for companies: Why this report?

I- INTRODUCTION

I-1 Why this report?

This report has been written for the integration following the written exam passed of the Information and Communication Technology course attended at the University of Trento in year 2007.

I choose this topic for many reasons.First because I am an Open Source user and secondly because this is a nowadays topic.

Who never heard about Linux or OpenOffice?

Most of the time these solutions are used as an alternative of cost reduction which is closely connected to our ICT course which is to analyze IT on an economic point of view.

This report has been also made to know more about these two software and to analyze the acquisition of such IT solutions inside a company.

Moreover a lot of people are speaking about Linux without knowing what it is really,I was one of them before starting to make this report.This is why I developed one specific part to this solution.

For a personal point of view I was curious of discovering what is Linux and I was eager to have the time to study it.

This is for all of these reasons that I decided to study the opportunities of using Open Source solutions for companies.

OSS for companies: Table of contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I- Introduction

I-1 Why this report?

I-2 Open Source definition

I-3 Brief history of the open source phenomenon

II- Open Source solutions for companies

II-1 What is today the place of Open Source solutions in companies?

II-1.1 Open Source Applications in companies

II-1.2 Trends towards the Open Source Applications in the coming years

II-2 Some examples of some Open Source solutions(Linux,OpenOffice)

II-2.1-Open Office

II-2.1.1-Presentation of the software

II-2.1.2-Price of the software and consequences of it

II-2.1.3-Advantages and drawbacks

II-2.2-Linux

II-2.2.1-Presentation of Linux

II-2.2.2- Main complaints about Linux

II-2.2.3-Linux versus Windows

II-3 Pros and cons of adopting such solutions for your company

II-4 How to migrate to FOSS?

II-5 Who are the FOSS providers?

II-6 Why people are participating in FOSS communities?

III-Conclusion

IV-Annex

IV-1 References

IV-2 Glossary

Open Source Solutions for companies: Report

Open Source Solutions for companies

by Ronan CHARDONNEAU