Analyst Admits Open Source Will Quietly Take Over

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.'"

That's Positive? Positively clueless.

"despite their objection"? who are these people who "object" to using free software and why? No one objects to email and the web, but they are largely run by free software, as is pointed out in the fine article by Taylor. This position and the way they take it for granted is baffling. Do the majority of people really care what business model their software is developed under? Are there really people who would pick up their pitchforks if confronted with Firefox? Do non free software companies really enjoy such mass support that people would never bother to look at options that could save them hundreds of dollars up front and all sorts of pain down the road?

"technical skill required to use it"? My two year old can click a mouse and my whole family uses GNU/Linux without missing a beat and has for years. Our TCO has been far lower thanks to free software - we use hardware much longer, don't have to pay hundreds of dollars for fundamental software like text editors and things just work.

Gartner people understand things are on the way but really the tone is hostile.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

Wow. Twitter is actually making sense. Look out for pod people :).

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.

You'd be surprised how often you have the "free equals worthless" assumption in key decision positions. It is sometimes hard to get it into the skull of MBAs that this can work out. They are far too used to offers that are too good to be true, so their train of thought is: "Free, more stable, more secure? Ok, where's the catch? Because if it was, why would anyone still buy software that's less secure, less stable and has a price tag?"

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

I, for one, want a company to be held responsible for bugs in the code I use.

The sound you hear in the background is laughter coming from the vicinity of Redmond. Our software caused your database to fall down and go poof, and with it your whole company because you couldn't fulfill your orders? Gee. Too bad. Responsible? Read the EULA, dunno who, but certainly not us.

Logical fallacy

You don't care if the company sells you proprietary or open source code. You just care about guaranteed support and some penalties to the vendor if it is not provided. Open source companies have more incentive to offer support since they can not just sell the code itself.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

While "free equally worthless" is a common fallacy, there are other reasons to want proprietary code. I, for one, want a company to be held responsible for bugs in the code I use.

Good luck trying that with a typical piece of proprietary software. In order to stand any chance of doing this you'd need to take the company to court and win.

If there's a bug I want to be able to outsource the patch in the form of paying for it.

Which is something you can easily do with open source. With proprietary software you face both technical and legal issues even trying.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

You're reasoning is also a very common fallacy...
Software almost always comes with NO GUARANTEES, wether you pay for it or not (read the license agreements)... And the supplier is under NO OBLIGATION WHATSOEVER to fix any bugs.

With proprietary code, you have a single vendor who *could* fix the bug for you, but they are under no obligation to do so or to charge you a fair price for doing so. They can turn around and refuse to fix the bug, or charge you a billion dollars for doing it, leaving you with no other option.

By contrast, open source code can be fixed by multiple parties, assuming you bought a supported package of open source software from eg RedHat you can go there first... Failing that, you can *always* pay third party programmers to fix the bugs for you.

While your requirements are completely valid, the logical course of action with such requirements is open source.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

Which is why you submit the code back to the original project. Then an upgrade just works. It's not a terribly hard concept to get.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

"And after you modify your source version of the code, congratulations, upgrading to the next version is at best case going to require careful thought and planning, and at worst case a lot of time and effort on your part."

And even then you end up on a wining position.

In the first case you would have a relaxed upgrade path (hey, we all know all privative-licensed programs are always a breeze to upgrade, don't we?) *but* the software *still* will have the bug: remember that the case was about a privative-licensed software whose owner didn't want to provide a bugfix vs. an open-licensed software whose primary provider didn't want to provide a bugfix.

In the second case you still would have two valuable options:
1) Provide the bugfix to the upstream vendor *even* if it didn't want to produce it itself. The upstream vendor might want to patch the main line after the hard work is done (after all, it will probably benefit their other clients).
2) Assess a cost-benefit analysis: is the bugfix valuable enough for all the hassle of patching new versions? If it is valuable enough, you still win versus the option of no bugfix at all, and if it isn't worth the effort you still are no *worse* than in the very begining.

So, again, even using arguments from closed-source minions open source arises as a win-win proposition.

"The danger of customizing your open source product is the same danger that companies face modifying products like SAP"

This is quite off-topic, but HA! is SAP what you are talking about? Is there any company that uses SAP as-is? Heck, is even SAP meant to be working out-of-the-box in any case? Of course upgrading will be expensive but in the case of SAP it is out from a well thougth strategy where SAP is more focused on SAP itself and its consultants, knowing they work by their side about getting enough gullible CxOs to make their day. SAP is *all* about being expensive and CxO marketable.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

I don't think its that simple. As an experiment I wiped a spare machine of Windows 2000 (which my 10 year old daughter was so fond of) and installed a copy of Ubuntu 7.10 on it. After 1 month of struggling with learning the machine, she won't even touch that computer. I'm not downing the OS though, but my point is, I am willing to pay for software (and probably so is many others) that is easy to use. A lot of you may say that Windows sucks, and that may be true (Vista is defintely not winning brownie points with me entirely), but a lot of people find it simple to use. This is not to say Microsoft is the world's best software company, or anything close. But what Microsoft and other for profit companies do better than FOSS systems and software is provide easy user interfaces, which can be learned fast. Anyone who has used any version of Windows, can fairly (with a 2 - 6 hour learning curve) get up and running with little to no hiccups.

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.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

I am fond of comparing Windows vs. Linux with the argument of VB vs. C in languages. In Windows, as well as in VB, you can quickly start getting stuff done. The learning curve is quite gentle, and you have quick success getting "something" up and running. And while the guy with Linux is still trying to get his networking up (or that C programmer tries to get that message loop sorted out), you're already surfing, playing and listening to music (or, in VB, you already have a nice looking interface that you patched together with a few easy mouseclicks).

After a while, though, it turns around. Frustration sets in, for the Windows user as well as for the VB programmer. A lot of the things you want to do simply don't work. Or are hard to pull off. You start to see the shortcomings in your OS (or language), you look over to the other guy and see how easily he can pull off what would be a major feat for you (try to do a full HD backup and compress it at the same time in Windows, something that's a very trivial matter with dd and bzip in Linux, or compare it to any kind of pointer operation in the programming analogy).

You start being pissed at your system (or language), you start envying the guy you belittled earlier for his choice of the "needlessly complex" tool. And generally, you'll be dissatisfied in the long run.

That's pretty much how I see it. Yes, the learning curve is still a bit more steep for Linux (although it has mellowed out a DAMN lot, especially with the advent of udev which makes the "now, which chipset do I have..." guessworking no longer the primary source of frustration during setup), but you'll be frustrated the first month of usage, then it's like floating on air. Not the other way 'round.

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

Nicely summarized. I've also seen it written as a single line: "VB makes the first 90% easy by making the last 10% impossible."

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

I don't think its that simple. As an experiment I wiped a spare machine of Windows 2000 (which my 10 year old daughter was so fond of) and installed a copy of Ubuntu 7.10 on it. After 1 month of struggling with learning the machine, she won't even touch that computer. I'm not downing the OS though, but my point is, I am willing to pay for software (and probably so is many others) that is easy to use.

So, you're saying you're taking an eight year old computer and you erase the operating system that your daughter likes and replace it with one that you yourself hate, that she has never used and didn't ask for, and that probably doesn't run any of the software she likes or is used to. And then you force your 10 year old daughter to use it. And because she complains about that, you conclude that Linux is less usable than Windows.

Your "experiment" tells us nothing about the relative usability of Windows and Linux. All it tells us is that you really aren't very smart.

Certain Software Companies Would Disagree

LOTS of people would object to "free" software, if it drove their business model into the ground!

Geez... are you the only one who has not heard Microsoft practically screaming in pain this last year?

Re:That's Positive? Positively clueless.

In the one single paragraph, they have explicitly shown the world the main difference between Linux and Windows - Linux Admins know what the fuck they're doing - Windows Admins don't need to.

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 .conf files to accomplish the same best practices that takes a couple of clicks and 2 minutes on a Windows machine.

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.

Reliable and uniform?

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?
...
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."

Reliable and uniform -- not the words I would have have used in context of windows administration. The problem with windows administration (and I mostly mean 3rd party server software, but also Microsoft stuff) is that often the GUI is the only sane way to do things -- the cli interface, if it exists, is an afterthought. So automating anything is impossible or hard and debugging problems becomes a game of guesswork.

Yeah, that may be an unfair extrapolation from my experience that includes some fairly bad software vendors and it might even be outdated (as I haven't touched windows in years). Still, that is one of the reasons I prefer not to have anything to do with Windows, at home or at work.

A good start

It would be nice if some people who wrote some cool legacy programs released the source on those under an OSS license. I could think of half-a-dozen super cool ones in my field alone.

Re:that would be nice

On the contrary, I think there is a vast field of tasks where there is currently no good solution, open source or proprietary.

The assertion that there's very few tasks left is equivalent to saying that progress has almost finished.

Of course, your point is well taken: useful things that are already written but are falling out of date will surely be re-implemented by somebody else, better, given time; and then the original source code won't be so useful.

Use != Take Over

Every enterprise "using" something just means it has over 0% penetration. Just because somebody in the company scripts in Perl (which is open source) doesn't mean it's taking over.

So how does one make money in this market?

If all or most software is going open-source, how does a software company make money?

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.

Services DO provide real cash flow

Yes, services! Services really do provide real cash flow. In fact, business like service so much they often prefer to convert to that model when they can. Service is an incremental cash flow that keeps on coming. Selling software is a one time sale.

Sure, you can sell upgrades. But you can also sell maintenance, management, and consulting service. You can even sell installation service (unless you make software that installs itself).

The risk of service work is not this lack of ramp up that you claim. Instead, the real risk is a higher level of competition. That is, you'll have a lot of others who can provide the same kind of service, including support service for open source software. Another risk is that if you identify a need to make improvements, you won't invest money in that effort since you can't use it as market leverage. By contrast, a service can be to sell the work of customizing the software to meet individual client needs.

Re:So how does one make money in this market?

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.

Yeah, these guys [ibm.com] don't have cash flow, serious projects or research.

There's no advantage to propietary

MSFT was trying to sell litigation fear over Linux, all the while the BSA was handing out hundreds of thousands in fines. Maybe there's an IP risk for Linux but positively there's a risk of a BSA audit. I've never been in a Windows shop that would survive a 100% audit without finding something out of compliance. Even the Death Star security shops.

Product activation, DRM, dongles and a dozen other ways the proprietary model has shot themselves in the foot. If you need capacity on an open source platform, just stand it up. Fast and uncomplicated.

And the only machines I trust on the internet are my Linux boxes.

I'm starting my new businesses on Linux from the ground up. All the money I would have spent on software can now go to more productive expenses...like booze and strippers. Okay, that's not true but it's nice to have the option.

Unless they're deductible.

How can you "admit" a prediction?

What's with "analyst admits"? Like he knows something?

How about an adjective like "thinks", "suspects", or "predicts".

Nobody is admitting anything here.

Complete report

The linked blog article is okay if you want a summary, but if you'd prefer, you can check out the complete document. Here's a PDF link to Gartner's full analysis: The State of Open Source 2008 [gartner.com].