Open Source Software

Open source software solutions have changed software development significantly, because they provide more versatile alternatives than commercial products, with lower costs.

Almost all new programming languages, tools and libraries are published with open source licenses. These include Scala, Clojure and Microsoft F#, for example. As a result, a lot more developers participate in the development of these open source products than in the development of earlier commercial products. This also means that the developers can utilize new features much faster than in the traditional closed source model, where users have to adapt to the supplier's release schedules.

Better quality with open source

Reasons for selecting an open source solution include:

• Open source products often have more advanced features than commercial products.
• The transparency of the software makes it easier to understand the overall system and solve problems.
• Developer support from the community is often very good, even excellent.
• The openness of the code tends to correlate with better quality.
• Anyone can participate in the development of the technology, so creating derivative solutions is easier.
• License costs of commercial products are often high.

In modern corporate solutions, the software is commonly based on open source solutions that are complemented with commercial products if necessary. Open source solutions are available for practically all types of development work. In some very industry specific or otherwise specialized systems, however, commercial products may be the best technology choice.

Using open source requires expertise

Different selection criteria are applied for open source products and commercial products. Assessing open source solutions requires expertise and active monitoring of the field. The most important selection criteria include prevalence, popularity, an active developer community and the quality of the code.

A weakness in open source software is that support for older versions is often only available for a short time and service offerings such as support and training are often poorer than with commercial providers. For established open source products, however, the support from developers and user community is good and the information available is objective.

When using open source solutions it is important to note that

• Using open source requires in-depth knowledge of different alternatives and active monitoring of open source code projects.
• Open source is currently at its best in platforms, infrastructure solutions and application development frameworks. There are no workable open source applications for financial administration, for example.
• The lifetime of rarely used open source products can be rather short. Technology choices should be viewed in a longer timespan.
• When using open source software, the specific license conditions must be considered.

On the other hand, life with commercial software is not problem-free either. Version updates may require a lot of work, product support can be terminated, or source codes may not be available. The benefit of open source products is that the source code is always available, so you will not be left in trouble, no matter what.

Pekka Enberg, Software Architect

Pekka Enberg is an enthusiastic open source developer. He has been developing the Linux operating system since 2005. Currently he also participates in the development of alternative Java class library implementation project GNU Classpath.

Joni Freeman, Chief Architect

Joni Freeman has been implementing Internet applications since 1995. He is specialized in open source software and actively participates in open source community projects (for instance, formerly Apache Wicket, currently the Scala programming language and the Lift JSON library).