Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over 304
ZDOne writes "In a few years' time, almost all businesses will use open source, according to analyst Gartner — which has up to now been fairly cautious, or downright negative, in its previous predictions about community developed software. '"By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use open source in direct or embedded forms,' predicts a Gartner report, The State of Open Source 2008, which sees a 'stealth' impact for the technology in embedded form: "Users who reject open source for technical, legal or business reasons might find themselves unintentionally using open source despite their opposition.'"
A good start (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:5, Interesting)
I can see why they would avoid specific instances of open source for these reasons -- e.g. using source code from GPLv2 licenses. But I'm not aware of any good (or even reasonably bad) reason for any company to avoid open source as a whole, on principle. Not Apple, nor Microsoft, nor Exxon-Mobil, nor Wal-Mart. A sole proprietor might have some misconceptions about security or a "nothing good is free" (as in beer) attitude, but this is hardly an enterprise.
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:2, Interesting)
So how does one make money in this market? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't say services because services don't provide real cash flow. What I mean is enough cash flow for serious new projects and research. Service work has a relatively low profit margin because there is no way to "ramp up" as it were. You need people to do work and their time is limited. Once a piece of commercial software is developed it can continue to provide profit with only maintenance costs. Plus you can sell upgrades.
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:4, Interesting)
And while I'll tough it out (to my extreme dismay) and learn Linux and other free systems, truthfully, I just don't like them. Simply because most of the time they have a "programmer's" feel to them and not a "user's" feel. On a postiive note though, going back to the Ubuntu OS, I do see promise and potential, and I don't say that lightly.
The news bias needs to change... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:2, Interesting)
Twitter man, listen. You could be a valuable member of the slashdot community (way more valuable than my in-and-out self) but give up the multiple personalities, and for all of our sakes, AT LEAST stop having full conversations with yourself. I believe in you and your ability to contribute. We all get hit with mod-trolls sometimes, just take the hit and move on. You'll get MY mod points for insightful, interesting or otherwise positive comments, so just be yourself and stop trying to game the system.
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Services DO provide real cash flow (Score:3, Interesting)
Open source software (Linux, Apache, Postgres, Sendmail, etc) provides virtually unlimited opportunity for making money by providing service. It's all stable, reliable, secure and proven. It provides an EXCELLENT platform for providing services on. But if you think that providing Linux, Apache, Postgres, or Sendmail service is what you'd be selling, get ready to lose your shirt.
These softwares aren't particularly conducive to service in and of themselves, because they are free, and simply providing access to these toolkits is "commodity service". So get set for $6.95/month hosting, or maybe even free [987mb.com]. Whoopee! (not!)
To make money, you don't sell sendmail or apache service, you sell services with these as a platform. Find something that you can build with these powerful tools, and sell THAT.
Assume that you've identified a need to track tractor tire overhauls. You could put together a special tool for tracking tractor tire overhauls to farmers using PHP, Postgres, and a $500 Linux server. If you market it right, you could build a million dollar business.
In fields everywhere from brokering the exchange of liver and kidney transplants, tracking the average speed of cars on the highway, to delivering educational flash videos to pre-school children, you'll find an endless variety of services you can deliver very profitably using open source software as your base.
The cool part is that you'll be able to give back lots - anything that you do which isn't a "core competence" is appropriately handled by giving your work back to the community, so that it can be absorbed into the codebase and used forever thereafter.
It's a brave new world, one that the quick, nimble, and creative will excel in.
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm calling bullshit.
I am a user of Windows, OS X, and Linux. I make my living as a Windows admin--which I do *damn* well I might add--have found Xubuntu to be a great option for very low end machines (I converted my neighbor to Linux as a fun project) and find OS X to be my OS of choice on a laptop. I have experience working with each of the OS's, and have used both Windows and Ubuntu Server products and I can say, without a doubt, that your statement is not only elitist, but very, very stupid.
Tell me, oh mighty AC, why it is imperative that I know how to manually configure AD structure by hacking my way through a tool like ADSI Edit, when I can just use the standard Active Directory snap-ins?
Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to know precisely how to edit various INI files and the system registry to change settings, when I can just click something in a GUI?
Why should I, as a Windows Admin, have to write an incredibly long and painfully meticulous netsh command to allow something past my firewall when I can just click my way to network settings?
I won't because I DON'T FUCKING HAVE TO!
Step back a second, and ask all of those questions with their Linux counterparts. The answer turns into "BECAUSE THERE IS NO OTHER RELIABLE AND UNIFORM WAY TO DO SO."
When it comes down to it, setting up a Linux server in a nice, secure fashion is a royal pain in the ass. You have to type MILES of command lines and edit scores of
Furthermore, that lower learning curve to becoming a Windows admin has--you guessed it--created more Windows admins! If a Linux admin needs to worship at Torvalds' feet and perpetually keep an eye out for him on the street so he can give Torvalds the obligatory blowjob he deserves for creating such a wonderful kernel, that makes a good Linux admin harder to come by! Therefore, a competent Linux admin suddenly costs more money to hire because of his greater skill set and lower availability. If you can, however, hire a SINGLE Windows God in a medium to large business, who can delegate tasks to people who are lower on the food chain (like the ones who can click "Next..Next..Finish" but not use ADSI Edit), your maintenance costs go down...
Run a Linux server? No thank you. I'll take Windows---not because I'm an incompetent Network admin, but because I don't fucking hate myself.
Oh, that and Exchange.
I'm trying to get approval now for embedded Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
I slammed together a really quite sophisticated robotic scanner controller processing unit for my own company, which I will now shamelessly plug in case any of you need to get custom 20-ton steel castings, give us a call, heck you never know. WHEMCO [whemco.com]
My unit uses the V4L Linux kernel API to run a frame grabber unit. I don't know of any way to run it under Windows except writing some kind of customized TWAIN driver or somesuch bull that will never happen. My Linux system works *right now* and has been demonstrated to company executives who said things like "this is fucking amazing!"
I ordered some hardware to build the actual prototype, and IT has shut me down. They are whining about all kinds of things like "who is going to support it?"
Hey, when I welded together the robot arms, IT didn't ask me who would "support it." Why should it be any different with my brainbox unit. Face it, those guys will *NEVER* be able to write or understand anything like this. If the program has a cos() call in it, they are done.
Re:Services DO provide real cash flow (Score:3, Interesting)
Other models such as Adobe Flex do work well with open source however. But I would prefer to find a licensing model that doesn't require the initial creator giving up all future rights to their work. Even geeks need to make a living.
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:3, Interesting)
You tend to find the same thing on sites specifcially carrying Windows "free" software. There can be all types of shareware, nagware, crippleware, trialware, free only to certain types of users, etc. With what could be genuinely described as "freeware (including OSS) being in a hard to find minority.
A possible reason for people being uncertain about "free software" is that if they are familiar with software for proprietary systems "free" is a very much abused term.
Edubuntu: Linux for Young Human Beings (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well .NET is a pretty decent class library as far as those go. Microsoft has never denied that it was strongly influenced by java's class library, but it is still rather difficult to design a good class library at all, let alone one usable in multiple languages, and a common run-time system. For what .NET it does it fairly well.
As for Visual Studio, it is a damn good IDE, and is arguably slightly nicer than even the best FOSS IDE, Eclipse. (Though it is also lacking some of Eclipse's nicer features). The truth is though that the FOSS community does not use IDE's very much, so having one that is excellent is really not a top concern.
As far as quality of the compiler itself, the GCC compiler family is unquestionably superior to Microsoft's compilers.