Cost-Conscious Companies Turn To Open Source 249
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
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... (Score:5, Informative)
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...
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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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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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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.
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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.
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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
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Would love to... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Would love to... (Score:5, Interesting)
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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Interestingly, it's the sam
Re:Would love to... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Sounds like your problem isn't so much the software, but the staff and lack of policies.
Smells fishy to me (Score:2)
We are supposedly an open source shop and productivity is severely hampered by the constant maintenance required.
If that's the case then you've implemented OSS badly. We're 90% Linux here and the last significant downtime we recorded was when the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through town and knocked out the power across the whole area. We use OSS solutions precisely because we don't have to jack with them all the time. The last place I worked that was constantly tweaking and fixing things was an all
Re:Would love to... (Score:4, Funny)
With that requirement, it would be hard to beat Microsoft's offings.
Really? It exists in Brazil. (Score:2)
That's weird. Here in Brazil, most POS solutions (that's "Point of Sale," not "Piece of $#!+") are Windows-based, but I found a few Linux-based solutions, of which some were Free Software and some were proprietary. The best one, called Stoq, does everything I want, and it's real Free Software, so if I want to have it modified or customized, I can get the source code and adapt it myself or
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I wish I was able to move more things to OSS.
I have had the devil of a time in my company just getting people to switch to Open Office from MS Office, and this is for people who only use basic word processing and spreadsheet functionality.
The fact that it does exactly the same things and only has a slightly different interface doesn't seem to matter - if it doesn't look exactly the same as Office they simply stare blankly at the screen, or pester me so relentlessly about walking them through every little fe
Re:Would love to... (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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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
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"I certainly wouldn't hand that software to all of my competitors who didn't have to sell their firstborn children to pay for it like I did."
That is the problem with FOSS.
The idea is that you will get back more than you put into it. Or you could go into business selling it yourself with support.
But that is the problem with FOSS.
But there are some projects that might fit what you need.
But none of them seem both mature and active to be honest.
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Again that is the weakness of FOSS.
There are FOSS POS software. I suggest that you try some of them out and see if any of them fit your needs. If not you may find that the developer will add features for $$$.
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Which was the best and what features does it lack if I might ask?
Also I know that SQL Ledger has POS and you may want to look at LedgerSMB as well.
Web Filter (Score:2, Informative)
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You weren't paid?
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As a salaried employee, he will be paid wether he implements a new proxy or not. If he has no other work to do at the time he would just be sitting idle so yes, the relative cost really could be $0.
I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
TCO not always lower (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:TCO not always lower (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Yes, niche software is far less likely to be covered...
But in those cases, i would still like to run the niche software on linux, If i have to pay for the apps then so be it, the underlying OS is not a niche product and i shouldn't have to pay for that as well, just like i shouldn't have to buy proprietary hardware for a generic purpose (i want it to run on standard hardware, tho specialized peripherals are ok if its really necessary).
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You know, saying something is in "the top 99%" isn't really a ringing endorsement of the product...
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Tech support? What support? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I'd say that bugtracking, ticket tracking OSS software is one area where OSS far outperforms the commercial stuff. We use Siebel for our corporate stuff, and ... I hate it with a true passion. We also use Mantis for internal bug tracking, so far 3 groups have decided that they want to continue using it, or move to using it.
Same applies to Remedy and Clarify and .. all the others.
That does not necessarily apply to other areas, I find that there is some OSS software that is brilliant, and a ton that is poop,
Obligatory question (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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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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 (Score:5, Funny)
Good point. This is why the ultimate cost saver is to switch from commercial software to pirated commercial software.
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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. :)
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> Would you replace Oracle with PostgreSQL if "all" you had in house were Oracle gurus?
If your in house Oracle people can't quickly adapt to a new OS or new RDBMS then they aren't really gurus.
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In the current market, unemployment is rising, costs are rising...
Using cheaper software is a good way to save money...
If that cheaper software requires more staff, hiring those staff is comparatively easier in the current market, and the savings from free software could easily pay for a few staff while still saving you money in a medium to large company.
And consider long term savings, once you have postgres competent staff on hand the choice to make future deployments on postgres is a no brainer.
Also using
Let's not also forget... (Score:2)
The cost of a bad decision is amortized over the life of the system. It is easier for a business to accept a low initial cost in exchange for paying a much greater total cost over the life of the product than it is for them to accept a large initial cost with much greater long term savings.
This is why Windows is so successful. Consumers browsing Best Buy don't see the annual reinstall or inevitable virus-cleanup. They see a product which is easy to use from the outset, and can play their video and aud
What non-free software do you have? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Partly because I don't want license management to become a headache as the business grows. This i the biggest factor for me favoring open source solutions. I remember calling our MS Rep, and a few others, 3 people gave me 3 different answers about how to license MS SQL Server. (per processor, or how many seats). Total pain in the ass. Its funny, but I've never seen a TCO calculation take into consideration how much time and money you have to spend to ensure that you are in compliance. For larger compani
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One thing I have always thought was interesting, was that MS doesn't write/sell any software to track licensing compliance themselves. I used to think that was a mistake on their part, but after hearing/seeing how much it nets them in audits, it was a genius move on their part!
It's worse than that. I've looked into license management and auditing software; I found out a few interesting things:
Re:Availability (Score:2)
I would think another problem might be that if you opt for a commercial solution you have no guarantee that the company and its software will continue to exist in the future. With FOSS the author(s) might stop writing it and companies that support it might come and go, but you always have the option of hiring a developer to expand and improve it if you wish to do so. With commercial software your only choice is to continue to use a deteriorating product, or switch to something else.
Open Source cost saving (Score:2)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Don't think splunk is open source...
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Only if you're analysing a relatively small amount of data.
I promise you that as soon as you go over that limit, the price will give you one hell of a shock.
Ah yes, the cost-conscious companies (Score:2, Funny)
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Get rid of Exchange and SharePoint (Score:2)
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Not a question.. (Score:2)
Come on, with so many networkable games around this is not a question that will arise :-).
However, it assumes you like the Citadel model. I'm not so happy with it, but that's personal taste - I am certainly impressed by its ability to interact with other Citadel servers.
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Have you ever actually used OpenGroupware? Please don't recommend it.
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I happen to be a Citadel developer. I only mention a few others in order to focus on the idea rather than a specific product. Of course I think you should be running Citadel. :)
Sorry, nice try (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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Agreed 100%.
The problem is that Exchange has put Microsoft in a very powerful position. I don't care what others say about products like Citadel, OpenGroupware, Zimbra or whatever, quite simply none of them integrate with Outlook anywhere near as well. (Yes, I've set them up in test environments). And while you can whine "But microsoft make that hard!!11", the executive who wants a shared calendar which appears on his smartphone and Outlook doesn't care about that. He cares about his calendar. And he d
software appliances can further reduce costs (Score:2, Interesting)
Despite being free on one level, if you look at opensource from a business perspective you realize they are looking at the costs slightly differently.
If they are looking at all that is. To be considered by a business, the opensource alternative has to be noticed first, and that isn't trivial considering the vast majority of opensource projects don't exactly have a marketing budget.
One way to lower the barrier to entry is to make an opensource solution really easy to try out, but sometimes even that isn'
hidden costs (Score:2)
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 that require customization and put the burden on your IT staff to make it happen. Some of those are no-brainers but some of the more specialized enterprise stuff gets REALLY hairy. With deadlines, migrations, and trouble-shooting, the company might spend just as much money on over-time and lost productivity or, worse, the salaried IT staffers will suff
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There is still no substitute for doing your job. You still have to evaluate the software.
Use FOSS where it makes sense... (Score:2)
When we started development of our software, we noticed that everyone else in our business were all depolyed on Windows. When we were doing research on our main competitor in this region, it was pretty clear why they were Windows based, all of the company's founders had worked for Microsoft or were certified MS techs.
From the outset we were going to be using *iux based servers with PHP & PostgreSQL and JAVA for desktop apps. OpenBravo powers our ERP and POS systems.
Originally I pushed for FreeBSD, but
Specific open source tools that save money (Score:2)
gcc as your compiler. The visual GUI's for various Microsoft compilers are pretty, but tend to produce crap code.
GNU-make for building software. Again, the GUI's for software builders are pretty, but tend to reproduce problems solved in GNU make 10 years ago.
CygWin for Windows SSH and X software. It costs some support, but is much lighterweight, more powerful, and more flexible than the commercial X servers.
Bugzilla for ticketing. The idea in commercial systems of 'internal notes' that the bug submitter can
Where I work... (Score:2)
We were traditionally a windows company. However, the number of linux boxes is growing rapidly in engineering. I have a windows box, a linux box, and a dual-boot laptop. I can do most everything on my linux box, the windows box is mostly for using Outlook (we run Exchange) and having an environment common to the one engineers on windows machines have. The laptop is for small scale experiments. All in all its a great setup for me.
Get a bonus (Score:2)
Switch your company to GNUCash. Of course, you will need to know something about bookkeeping and accounting to hide your bonus in there like the C*Oes do.
(What? You didn't think you'd get anything more than a Jelly-of-the-Month club subscription for saving the company millions, did you?)
Stuff that works and stuff that drives us nuts (Score:2)
I'm typing this on a Linux box. It works just fine. It's a powerful development platform and I've developed all sorts of cool stuff on it.
We make extensive use of Apache, MySQL, and related goodies. One of my recent applications was my first foray in to Django. It too works just fine.
Now we're looking at VoIP, based on Asterisk. I downloaded the current source tarball, built it, am using the O"Reilly Asterisk book to figure out how it works. It works. I just phoned a test extension and left voicemail. G
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Not sure if it fits the bill, but TextWrangler [barebones.com] has a lot of features.
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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.
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A spoon is a viable alternative to a shovel in certain circumstances like eating soup.
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Many people for a long time have insisted on eating soup with a shovel.
MySQL and Postgres taking over from Oracle aren't so much about how
good or bad either of those 2 products are. It's more a matter of
companies finally regaining a little sanity and realizing that they
should not overpay for small things based on brand name recognition.
Oracle is quite frequently gross overkill where it's employed.
It may even be deployed in a manner that fails to exploit any
of it's advantages over the likes of mysql or postg
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I'd hate to dig a big trench with a spoon.
Especially if my competitors are using shovels.
The trick is matching the tool to the task.
Note that I am not saying Oracle is the shovel and MySQL is the spoon. The previous posts reduced the argument to abstracts. This makes the argument applicable to many areas, not just the current discussion.
Decide for yourself which tools are shovels and which are spoons, then match them to the job at hand.
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Re:How about GIMP? (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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...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... ...those projects would return nothing financially on their investment.
Okay, we have companies giving away salaried labor for projects that don't make financial returns. How would a recession not hurt this kind of investment? That's basically angel investment.
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You're combining my two separate comments.
Angel investment refers to a rich individual providing capital for a start-up. They expect a direct financial return on their investment. Large companies, by definition, are not angel investors.
IBM, Apple, Google, and others that have employees work on open source do get a return on their investment, just indirectly. Apple, for example, includes the open source projects they work on with their server products. They make money on server sales, which obviously inc
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I've worked quite a few jobs that all involved office-type computer work and I've never ever received any form of training for the software that I had to use. I wonder how many employees out there really have been trained in working with the software they use. I'm guessing: not a whole lot.
If you're reading slashdot, then you are not speaking for non-technical users. It doesn't matter so much what they're trained for as what they're used to. If they're used to using Microsoft Office, they're productive with it. What's the benefit of switching an old version of Office to OpenOffice? What version of Microsoft Office is OpenOffice competitive with? For real? 98? 2000? 2003?
If you're setting up a new shop, it's a different question-- but people are just so resilient to change. Even moving simple
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How many companies make software products? I'm willing to bet the vast majority don't...
And even then, it's often permissible to link against OSS libraries without giving away the source of the program (you may have to distribute the library, which is open anyway).
But speaking of risk assessment, i hope your risk assessment of proprietary software includes the risks of not having a second source, because there is very little proprietary software for which a second source vendor is available if the first one
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