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Jumping on the Open Source bandwagon

Facing a threat from the OSS crowd, proprietary software vendors are co-opting that movement by using open-source technology to enhance commercial products and open sourcing some non-core components of their solution stacks. By Varun Aggarwal

Apprehensions about the use of Open Source software are gradually dying as an increasing number of companies stand up to support the open source revolution. Interestingly, it is not only the open source vendors that are supporting the cause but also a large number of proprietary software and hardware vendors that are either shifting towards open source or making open source an important part of their business.

With the adoption of Open Source software on the rise, particularly in China and India, Gartner predicts that by 2010 it will account for 20% of the global software market, displacing over $100 billion in revenues from traditional software vendors.

Long associated with the likes of Red Hat, Novell, MySQL, Apache etc., Open Source software counts companies such as Sun Microsystems, IBM and Oracle among its contributors and supporters. Even Microsoft, the world’s biggest software vendor whose business model is built on proprietary software has started offering Linux support apart from working with many other Open Source communities.

Asheesh Raina, Principal Analyst, Software Industry, Asia Pacific, Gartner, said, “There are various strategies adopted by vendors. However, most companies are not trying to fight OSS but rather go along with it by offering partial to complete compatibility. A few vendors support and integrate selected products and services with open-source solutions. A few companies are more conservative in nature and have limited compatibility. They share source code in such a manner so that Open Source Software can work with their proprietary products and not vice versa.”

Open source drivers

So why are leading IT vendors adopting Open Source even to a limited extent? Talking to Anu David, Sr. Research Analyst, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East revealed some interesting points. According to her, following are the main drivers behind this move:

• Adopting open source components in a proprietary product obviates the need to build the required functionality from scratch. With a number of open source projects already available which have implemented complex functionalities, commercial companies are realizing that they need not squander their resources on reinventing the wheel.
• In addition to existing functionality, a vibrant developer community that voluntarily submits bug fixes and continually performs feature enhancements characterizes most open source projects. This gives a powerful incentive to vendors trying to incorporate open source solutions, as they get such updates virtually free.
• Open source components are a good replacement for COTS (commercial, off-the-shelf) components to minimize capital expenditure and increase returns on investment.
• It also gives them access to a customer base that would start with the adoption of open source model (free or low cost) and eventually go for upgrades and features for a price from the vendor.

According to Jaijit Bhattacharya, Country Director, Government Strategy, Sun Microsystems India, “The Open Source movement allows more people to access ICT. This, in turn, enables them to buy better IT infrastructure, leading to increasing revenues for IT vendors. As far as the software vendors are concerned, they do not have to build software from scratch, reducing the product development life cycle.”

Santosh Dsouza, Chief Technologist, Sun Microsystems, said, “There are a number of features in a product that only a few customers demand. It is not feasible for software vendors to spend time working on such features. In case of Open Source, the community contribution helps bridge this gap. This not only gives a customer more insight into the product but also helps in increasing the product quality as quality issues can be more proactively addressed and comprehensive testing can be done.”

Pallavi Kathuria, Director-Server Business, Microsoft India, opined, “Today, as the level of heterogeneity in technology environments increases, we find an increased need for products and technologies to talk to each other. As part of our response to this customer need, we are ensuring that our technologies are able to interoperate with open source software—both commercial and otherwise. So, while we compete with commercialized Open Source Solutions (OSS) on value to win customers, we also collaborate with the OSS Community to help effectively address the interoperability needs of our customers.”

Business models built around OSS

[The OSS model has been successful in disrupting the software industry. Various OSS projects have had varied levels of success from Apache that dominates the Web Server segment to Linux, which is third in the Server OS category behind Windows Server and UNIX in revenues. Barring Apache, there is not an Open Source project that has beaten all contenders in any category though Firefox is a strong runner-up in the browser segment. – Editor]

Linux and other OSS on the back-end are complementing commercial software in customer engagements that include standards-based hardware platforms, software, and services. Additionally, open source technologies have spawned an ecosystem of developers building applications based on open architectures enabling IT systems to be truly interoperable. In today’s hybrid environment where open source and private source software coexist and complement each other, we may see users take a pragmatic business driven approach that exploits open innovation and open communities that are part of the larger open source ecosystem.

According to Anu David, “IT vendors are moving towards a hybrid model that integrates both proprietary and Open Source code. However, the options of directly adopting OSS vis-a-vis indirectly embedding it within the proprietary software and hardware solutions are not mutually exclusive. The decision depends on a number of different factors. For example, it makes sense for a company to embed Open Source components if it wants to shorten the product development life cycle. On the other hand, if the motive of the company were to extend its product line or use the Open Source product in its software stack, then it would be appropriate to adopt it directly. The license of the software also makes a huge impact when considering adoption. Certain licenses like the GPL guard open source software from use in proprietary products. A few other adoption factors include customer requirements, availability of resources, time to market, etc.”

[Many companies adopt Open Source to mount a challenge against a competitor when they have failed to dislodge said competitor from its perch using proprietary software of their own. IBM’s Lotus Symphony is an effort to reverse the fortunes of SmartSuite, which was a proprietary alternative to Microsoft Office but eventually failed to beat the latter. Sun Open Sourced StarOffice to take on Microsoft in a segment where it had no presence when it faced competition from Microsoft in the Server OS segment leading to the birth of OpenOffice which has been far more successful in terms of deployments than StarOffice ever was. Then there is the phenomenon of a company trying to influence the standardization process. Here there are many examples including Microsoft’s attempt to get OOXML ratified as a standard. Various companies are feuding over Web standards thanks to which no Web browser can claim to be truly standards compliant and so on. Sometimes companies release a specification with the intention of ensuring its widespread adoption once it becomes an Open Standard (NFS is one example) – Ed]

Dr. Guruduth Banavar- Director, IBM India Research Laboratory, said, “Open Source has been good for IBM’s software business. It is a good way to introduce businesses to IBM’s portfolio. Many businesses start with our open source offerings, and then migrate to our commercial offerings as their needs become more complex. Linux fills important niches, and proprietary software does so as well. It is not a zero-sum game. Our software business has enjoyed tremendous growth during the very years that Linux has grown. If you compare our revenue when Linux first became popular and where our revenue is today, you’ll find that our revenue has more than doubled to more than $20 billion.”

According to Shane Owenby, Senior Director, Linux & Open Source, Oracle APAC, “Oracle has a number of different ways to work with the Open Source community. Each of those projects has a project specific strategy that defines how we license our Open Source contributions and how we interact with that section of the community. For e.g. Oracle’s Linux model revolves around Enterprise Support for the Linux Operating System at a much lower cost. This support is available to any customer, not only Oracle customers but also any customer who is interested in deploying Linux. Oracle has invested in creating a dedicated R&D team. It provides all the support that one needs.” Oracle supports companies in their efforts to run Linux and get updates/upgrades on time. “Only Oracle delivers complete support for the complete software stack—database, middleware, applications, management tools, and the operating system itself. Enterprise support for the Linux is where Oracle differentiates itself in its business model,” concluded Owenby.

Open Source licensing

Companies have to be cautious while integrating OSS with their proprietary products. This is vital if a company wishes to avoid legal issues like patent infringement and copyright breach. In addition to these concerns, the license governing the product merits scrutiny.

There is a general misconception that all OSS is free and that you can use it as you please. The licensing terms governing the use of some OSS can be quite restrictive. There are over 70 different licenses registered at the Open Source Initiative (OSI) website. The most popular are the GPL, LGPL, BSD, and Apache licenses.

“The GPL license is the most protective Open Source license. Any software making use of GPL licensed software must be released, in turn, as Open Source and cannot be distributed as proprietary software. This so-called “viral” effect is unattractive to most commercial vendors. On the other hand, a BSD licensed Open Source product allows unrestricted use of the code in return for clear attribution to its owners. Other commercially friendly licenses include the LGPL (a less restricted version of the GPL), and Apache licenses,” explained Anu David.

Sun uses a mix of various licenses in its products. Open Solaris comes with a CDDL license (based on the Mozilla Public License, version 1.1 or MPL), allowing developers to build their own IP over it and retain it. Other products use various other open source licenses.

Talking about the Open Source licensing policies at Microsoft, Kathuria said, “Microsoft maintains two licenses that have been certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Certification by the OSI means that developers can be confident that the licenses meet the terms of the Open Source Definition. For an embedded project, Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL) is applicable.”

Owenby said, “Open Source licensing fully depends on the project and the use of that project in Oracle products. Linux is available under the GPL license, which requires free distribution of the source code. Developers outside of Red Hat write a significant amount of code shipped by the company as part of its distribution. Oracle takes the source code that Red Hat makes available under GPL.”

It is important for IT heads to examine the strategies of each vendor that they do business with and look deeper to see how the vendor is creating synergy with the Open Source model. Technology providers that execute on both principles will be well placed in the next five to 10 years.

For software manufacturers, it is important to determine which software assets are licensed as open source and which others have embedded open-source code in them and query commercial software suppliers for this information as well. All IT solutions must be examined to ensure compliance with licensing terms.

varun.aggarwal@expressindia.com