The success of open-source software has been remarkable, forcing even the largest commercial software vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Microsoft to acknowledge its influence and, in some cases, adopt its methods. It seems likely that most companies with information technology departments of any size are familiar with—if not actively using—open-source products on a daily basis.
Back in 1997, Bruce Perens, a prominent Linux operating system developer, wrote a document concerning the distribution and development of the Debian Linux distribution. He later removed references to Debian and created what is now known as The Open Source Definition. Among other things, the Definition states that open source software must be distributed without royalty, that the distributor must make the source code for the software freely available, and the derivative works from the code must also be released as open source.
Price is the reason
The first reason many companies begin looking at open-source software is simple: price. And the return on investment of the open-source model has been clearly demonstrated. Open-source software can be downloaded, installed and operated free. In its early days, this low cost made it a tempting option for developers interested in trying new tools or building new applications but without the budget to do so.
This freedom led many developers to start contributing to the open-source movement, resulting in such industrial-grade software as the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, JBoss Java application server and Eclipse development environment—among thousands of other projects.
It wasn't until the late 1990s, however, that corporations began noticing open source at the executive level. With developers touting the quality and cost savings of using open source, and with IT budgets under constant pressure, many large companies began investigating open source for enterprise projects. Early large-scale adopters included The Weather Channel, Cendant Travel, and Employease and Sabre.
Especially during the heavy growth of the Internet, open source let companies quickly ramp up their online operations without the need to constantly buy new licences for commercial software. This scalability also lent itself to development and test environments, reducing the cost to simply try new things without the added drag of commercial software pricing—and the mandatory budgetary process—getting in the way.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the fact that the source code is available for open-source products is usually not a big draw. While having the right to modify or fix code at will is certainly seen as a plus, many companies find that they'd rather not get into the habit of maintaining the code themselves, instead depending on the community of developers that exists around popular products to keep the code up to date and debugged.
Getting started
Today, nearly every sort of business software product, from e-mail servers to ERP tools to voice over IP, are available as open source. But many companies begin using open source on the Web side of their business, where a number of industrial-strength, long-used applications exist. These tools are commonly referred to as the LAMP stack (standing for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP—or Perl or Python, depending on the situation.)
Linux is a well-regarded, widely used Unix-like operating system. Apache is the most popular Web server in use today. MySQL is a database product that competes favourably with expensive commercial tools. And PHP, Perl and Python are programming or scripting languages commonly used for open-source Web development. Java-based open-source websites also often use the JBoss Java application server.
