Cost-Conscious Companies Turn To Open Source

Martyr4BK writes "BusinessWeek has a slew of special reports today on open source software discussing the benefits for buyers who are cost conscious and open source being the silver lining for the economic slump. They even have a slideshow of 'OSS alternatives' like Linux, Apache, MySQL, Firefox, Xen, Pentaho, OpenOffice.org, Drupal, Alfresco, SugarCRM, and Asterisk. These are all good examples (we use a bunch of them already); what other open source software can I use to drop my company's IT costs, and maybe get a decent bonus for the year?"

Couldn't find the slideshow mentioned...

[geminidomino (614729)]

Do they mention anything about project management? Even on linux, the free stuff I've found can't compete with the uber-expensive proprietary stuff. Am I just looking in the wrong places?

Re:Couldn't find the slideshow mentioned...

[AndGodSed (968378)]

I use planner.

Have you tried it? I find it is adequate for my needs. Mind you I am not the most hardcore project management user out there...

Re:

[geminidomino (614729)]

Yeah, I've tried it. It's actually under my "Office" submenu now (don't ask me why apt puts it there...)

Nice for the four kinds of charts, but not much else... Not even PERTs, apparently.

pitiful

[CarpetShark (865376)]

Planner wasted a day of my life last week. I put an entire project into it, and then found out it couldn't do leveling. It also couldn't export in MS Project or any other common format, so I had to start again in another project management tool. Eventually I just went with a table in a wordprocessor, and a collaboration webapp.

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[Nursie (632944)]

I've heard good things about both TaskJuggler and openproj.

The latter can read MS Project files.

TaskJuggler claims to be comprehensive, but I've got the impression that it's one of those OSS apps that does absolutely everything *if* you can figure out how the hell to get it to do anything at all.

Still, maybe worth a quick look at those two.

Re:Couldn't find the slideshow mentioned...

[liquidpele (663430)]

For product management, the best thing I've found is redmine [demo [redmine.org]]. I implemented it for the small company I do part time work for, and it's worked well so far. At my full time job, we use Mercury Quality Center. It's better in some respects but worse in others.

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[Foofoobar (318279)]

This is nothing more than Trac which again is still the best thing that open source has to offer. I use Trac and love it. It integrates with Subversion, has a wiki and bug tracking plus project management and tons of plugins including one for scrum support and gant charting. But as many will point out, it isn't a full project management tool. Openoffice was working on a project management tool but this got dropped. This unfortunately is one area that got dropped in the open source arena.

Re:

[mjhaynes (604572)]

You're not alone in having trouble finding hardcore project managment solutions, particularly if you're looking for something to replace Sharepoint and MS Project. I use Trac [edgewall.org] for project management and software development, and I really like it. It requires a database, Apache, and Python. I know that 37 Signals uses it for their development work.

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[Foofoobar (318279)]

Trac now has a nice SCRUM plugin. And a separate SCRUM tool is built off the TRAC project. Trac also has alot of additional plugins which are extremely useful for project management like gant charts and stuff and can integrate with subversion and has very basic bug tracking as well. Can be a good all in one tool for internal and remote offices (since it is web based).

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[Octorian (14086)]

Trac is an absolutely excellent software package, in its domain (smaller-team software development projects). I'd even go so far to say as its the best thing the OSS world has to offer in that arena. However, I'm not so sure its useful as a generic project-tracking system, in the way MS Project and similar software is intended.

Re:

[Foofoobar (318279)]

Aside from Trac though, I hate to say this but you are right. My manager recently asked about this and after researching, I had to admit that I couldn't find anything satisfactory. I use Trac (which is web based) but it's not something that I would suggest for project management on a daily basis. Agile42 [agile42.com] is the SCRUM tool based on Trac which again is web based but is very good. But again, not much out there for project management.

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[CornMaster (1105789)]

I use dotProject: http://dotproject.net/ [dotproject.net]

It's not exactly an application or linux only, as it is a web app, but it is free and open source. And it allows many users to input into a process. Currently our project manager manages everything with MS Project using some of its features. This type of product allows managers (or at least in our case) to offload some of the updating to the workers since they can log their own progress.

I've used a few other web app managers but dotProject seemed to have the most f

Would love to...

[DogDude (805747)]

Would love to save $$$ with OSS, but the software I need (robust, full-featured POS system) is non-existent. Bummer.

Re:Would love to...

[The Great Pretender (975978)]

I'm not convinced yet that money is saved for small to medium businesses. We are supposedly an open source shop and productivity is severely hampered by the constant maintenance required. We have twice the IT staff for half the people that were being served in my previous job, which was MS based.

In addition, the open source IT staff seem to just want to constantly be changing everything when something newer and flashier comes out (read that as closer to functionality to a purchased project). In one year we have had 3 different email servers, with the associated problems of swapping over. Or the IT recommended web casting software works on MAC and windows but doesn't have full functionality on the Linux boxes. I was hoping that would change when we change the IT staff lead, but the new guys seem the same.

I also find it amusing that the anti-MS IT staff bitch about things like MS Outlook, but then celebrate when Thunderbird adds a function bringing it closer to MS Outlook.

Over half the company just use their own personal laptops due to the hassle, which ironically, defeats the crippling obsession with security that the IT guys have.

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[Hobb3s (1016023)]

It sounds more like you have an issue with management and leadership in your IT department than issues with OSS.

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[The Great Pretender (975978)]

Oh, I agree with you. The problem lies in hiring talented staff. This is why I started saying that "I'm not convinced yet..." The concept of not paying the license fees is very attractive. However, albeit in my limited exposure, I have yet to see an OSS staff that is not distracted by the daily updates of products and one who can understand that BETA is not satisfactory for business operations. This is the hurdle that needs to be removed for me to accept OSS as a viable solution.

Interestingly, it's the sam

Re:Would love to...

[Bert64 (520050)]

Just goes to show that anything can be implemented badly...
Where i work we have 2 separate networks serving different parts of the company, one is all OSS while the other is primarily MS based.
The OSS one is faster, has better uptime, cost very little to build (runs entirely on hardware that was discarded by the MS oriented staff), and requires minimal maintenance. Users don't really notice any difference until something goes wrong, which happens far less frequently on the OSS network. The bean counters notice because of how under-budget the OSS based network is.

The MS guys are jealous of some of the fancy kit we have to play with, but we've still spent a lot less overall.

Re:Would love to...

[xs650 (741277)]

"Would love to save $$$ with OSS, but the software I need (robust, full-featured POS..."

With that requirement, it would be hard to beat Microsoft's offings.

Re:Would love to...

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Hire some developers and put them to work then release the software under the GPL.
Free doesn't always mean free as in beer.
The idea is that once you make the investment you will get others improving your software.
But for somethings like CAD I just don't think you will ever find a FOSS solution as good as what you pay for. But I think ProE run on Linux :)

Re:

[Hobb3s (1016023)]

That would be great, however the cost of several developers to create a system that rivals existing systems that we can buy would be prohibitive. If there were a middle ground.. hire a developer to tweak an existing 'almost there' system.. that would be doable.

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[Directrix1 (157787)]

That you would buy over and over again with each new upgrade. Software is not a fixed cost, it is always a recurring cost no matter how you look at it. An additional, often overlooked, cost of proprietary software is having to mold your workflow to match their model (using F/OSS and some dev time you can guide the project in the direction you need). You can start a project with a well organized website stating project goals, and let people build from there. State that developers are needed, offer reward

Web Filter

[Hobb3s (1016023)]

I've implemented Dansguardian webfiltering with a squid proxy on an unused Mac OS X server to placate my bosses need to control everyone's surfing habit and keep the cost of doing so at $0.

Re:

[Dionysus (12737)]

You weren't paid?

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[Andr T. (1006215)]

The agreement was that his web-surfing was not to be filtered.

I wonder

[LWATCDR (28044)]

Besides Slashdot how much FOSS does Slashdot use?
Do they use Asterisk for it's phone system? Or does it's parent company do all the "business" stuff for them and just let write perl and post articles?

Re:I wonder

[Foofoobar (318279)]

You use it where it is feasible and where it can be supported. At the financial company I work at, we are about to move to Asterisk (mainly because conferencing calls cost the company thousands of dollars each year). We have started dynamically creating our PDF's through a LAMP app instead of using a Windows app and closed source BIN for PDF generation. But all of these are supported and maintained in house. If they have the STAFF to support them, then I say do it. If they have the money to get someone else to support it, then I say do it. Otherwise, as a business, their best bet is to stay where the support and maintenance is... not even open source supporters can be all open source; we'd like to do everything ourselves but the fact of the matter is there just aren't enough hours in the day.

TCO not always lower

[NinthAgendaDotCom (1401899)]

I used to think the TCO argument was rubbish. But then I did some research this year on bug tracking software for my company. At least in this one area, it was obvious that while you'd save a few hundred initially on open source solutions, these solutions were much less polished and supported than their commercial competitors. I would have had to do a lot of additional installations and customization to get things working right. And there was no quick answer from a tech support email address when I would have trouble. And in another recent purchase of music production software, the open source versions were an absolute joke in comparison to commercial varieties. Open source is great. I use Firefox and Open Office all the time. But for business and specialty applications, commercial applications are still often much more solid and cheaper in the long run.

Re:TCO not always lower

[JCSoRocks (1142053)]

I think the source of this trouble is that when you use exceptionally popular programs like FireFox or 7zip you're seeing software that really isn't representative of FOSS. These are definitely in the top 99%.

When you start digging down into niche software that serves a tiny market segment you're getting into an area where few people are interested in using it and even fewer are interested in contributing. I do agree that these areas are currently best served by commercial apps. The whole FOSS thing works because so many people are contributing and it's easy to get support from one of the masses of people using it or working on it. On smaller projects you find yourself doing your own support - which isn't necessarily awful, it's just a real time sink.

Re:

[flyingfsck (986395)]

Hmm, even NASA uses Bugzilla.

Tech support? What support?

[mangu (126918)]

And there was no quick answer from a tech support email address when I would have trouble

Obviously, you've never worked for a corporation using commercial software. Try emailing, for instance, Oracle's tech support. At one time, it took me *two months* to get the response I needed from Oracle. Or rather, a response that *didn't* solve my problem: "that feature has been deprecated since Oracle 8i". It took them two full months just to find that an obscure feature that was essential to my work wasn't supported anymore.

Based on my 25+ years of experience of using software, both commercial and free, today I'd rather have Google and the source code than any paid tech support.

Obligatory question

[fgaliegue (1137441)]

And what about the _total_ cost of ownership?

I'm all for open source software, don't get me wrong, but switching from a known solution that Works For You(tm) even though it's horribly expensive to a $0 one but with a steep learning curve can be disastrous.

Would you replace Oracle with PostgreSQL if "all" you had in house were Oracle gurus?

I know, this is one example, others may not be that extreme. But taking this kind of decision has to be done with some caution.

Re:Obligatory question

[slim (1652)]

Would you replace Oracle with PostgreSQL if "all" you had in house were Oracle gurus?

I'd view that as being similar to replacing AIX or Solaris with Linux -- and that's something that plenty of companies have done successfully.

It does require retraining, it may involve buying support contracts, but it's proved worthwhile for many companies.

Re:

[poetmatt (793785)]

Well yes, people are tied down. TCO is not something very accurate all the time, though.

This is why adoption of open source in businesses has not been as fast as it could be.

That doesn't mean however that businesses are blind to the option of not paying licensing fees and being able to fix software with their own dev team/make improvements aka using open source.

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[zappepcs (820751)]

As you say, it depends. I'm moving two data warehouse setups from Oracle on Solaris to MySQL on CentOS Linux. I had a small problem with UTF-8 and of course rewriting truck loads of SQL statements, but over all it was worth it. The commodity hardware that CentOS is running on is 1/3 the cost of comparable Sun hardware. The maintenance cost burden of Solaris, Sun, and Oracle far outweigh the costs involved in the change over. Going forward the in-house staff are switching to the new OS/database with grace. P

Re:Obligatory question

[lewp (95638)]

Good point. This is why the ultimate cost saver is to switch from commercial software to pirated commercial software.

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[einer (459199)]

I know the intent (and moderation) was "funny" but this is actually how a former employer operated. Once he realized that all he had to do was not get caught for a certain period of time and it suddenly became worth it to not renew licenses, he stopped renewing licenses. He did get audited. It cost him an order of magnitude less than it would've to have kept current on his licenses for the five years he managed to skate by.

Your plan makes sense in some cases. :)

What non-free software do you have?

[slim (1652)]

Without telling us what non-free applications are currently being used, it's a very difficult question to answer.

If I were starting a business tomorrow, I can't think of a single piece of commercial software I'd standardise on.

Partly because I'm stingy when it comes to software. Partly because I don't want license management to become a headache as the business grows.

Open Source cost saving

[MosesJones (55544)]

Server side the savings are pretty obvious, especially around maintenance contracts. On the desktop its much harder as you have all the transition and training costs. Looking at things like SugarCRM, rather than Salesforce.com, is a grey area as you have to pay for the implementation rather than just renting.

Oh hang on its Slashdot and we aren't going to worry about the actual business change, implementation or management side of it, we just want to see two list prices compared and be able to go "OSS is f

Works for me

[IceCreamGuy (904648)]

Ever since I started using Nagios, I've been able to slowly help the rest of the IT department consider open source when starting projects. Now we use Nagios, Backuppc, MySQL, Perl, Splunk, Snare and Ubuntu LTS for servers. The clincher was not having to pay for licensing for a SQL server, OS and all. We're all so tired of dealing with the behemoth of a licensing scheme that Microsoft uses, and that's really what pushed us to alternatives.

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[Bert64 (520050)]

Don't think splunk is open source...

Ah yes, the cost-conscious companies

[dingen (958134)]

in contrast to all those companies out there with a policy of spending as much as possible.

Re:

[liquidpele (663430)]

What alternatives to DW did you find? The best I could find was Eclipse with plugins for php and sftp. It works pretty well, but it's not as clean a solution as I'd like since Eclipse just wasn't built for web programming.

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[suggsjc (726146)]

I've personally found that vi(m) is the best development tool around. You can say that DW/Eclipse saves you time with auto-completion and whatnot, but as for me and my sites, I take pride in the fact that I have typed every single character.

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[slim (1652)]

Time was, MySQL was an open source alternative to 'non-enterprise' DBs like FoxPro. Now it's a viable alternative to Oracle or DB2 in certain circumstances where the high end commercial features are overkill.

Re:

[larry bagina (561269)]

A spoon is a viable alternative to a shovel in certain circumstances like eating soup.

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[jank1887 (815982)]

depending on what you do, Paint.net [getpaint.net] is a decent low end alternative. I compare it to the slightly older versions of Paint Shop Pro, but they've supposedly added a lot of functionality in the last few versions, closing the Photoshop functionality gap a bit. It's native to windows, and having tested both GIMP and this, has a much less steep 'getting used to it' curve.

Re:How about GIMP?

[danieltdp (1287734)]

Sorry for the bluntness, but... holy crap! not The Gimp Thread Again. It boils down to:

1) Gimp is nice
2) Gimp gets better with time
3) Gimp's interface is horrible
4) Gimp's interface gets better with time
5) Gimp doesn't have CMYK support
6) This is not important to a whole lotta people
7) But it is a show stopper for some
8) iterate until hell freezes over

There, one less gimp thread!

Re:Migration doesn't sound like cost cutting.

[truthsearch (249536)]

Linux/F/OSS is mostly supported by angel investors and Sun Microsystems

This is just completely wrong. Most open source projects have no outside investors at all, but are either maintained on a developer's free or salaried time. IBM, Apple, and Google, for example, have hundreds of employees who contribute to open source projects on company time.

I don't know why you would think so many projects would be backed by angel investors when those projects would return nothing financially on their investment.

Sorry, nice try

[cheros (223479)]

At this very moment in time there is nothing I can pull in from the Net which I can run for a while as Exchange replacement without a large amount of work on the client side - MS has built the barriers quite well.

As long as there isn't a USABLE Exchange replacement we won't be able to lose it in the server room - management is addicted to Outlook (even though the 2007 version suffers the same productivity obliterating GUI) and its ability to share calendars. And AFAIK there is NO plug-n-play replacement ou

Re:

[mspohr (589790)]

"Here's the rub: pay for the proprietary software and get service, deployment, and customization with varying degrees of quality. Or get open source projects..."

... and get service, deployment, and customization with varying degrees of quality.

There is still no substitute for doing your job. You still have to evaluate the software.