Exploring open source

I’ve spent several days recently in the company of an avid open source implementer and advocate. Until recently, he featured on an Australian radio show as the resident open source (ie. Linux) geek.

Anyway, I’m very firmly in the Microsoft camp so we ended up in an argument over the worth of open source software.

The best thing that came of it was I decided that I really should know about the state of play in the open source world and know what I think (and be able to support it) about open vs. proprietary (or closed source) software. As an designer and implementer of solutions, I feel that I really need to know if I am to make a sound business decision whether to employ it or to avoid it in a given situation.

My pre-condition to this discussion is that open source or proprietary software bigotry has no place in IS design and implementation. It only serves to remove tools from our toolkits.

What I hope to cover in what I expect will become a series of posts will include:

• I want to know what I think about the various licences that exist (eg. GPL, LGPL, MIT, MSPL, etc)
• How can open source contribute to a business in terms of
  • cost savings
  • competitive advantage
• How can a company make a living out of open source development
• Is open source really more secure because anyone can read the code?

At the end of all this, my expectation is that I will have a better understanding of open source and have some opinions which I can support with evidence of where and when I’d consider employing it.