Acceleral

The Acceleral website uses the Open Source Joomla! on an Open Source Linux server running Apache, so need I say more?

Well, yes, I do, because a website is often considered fluffy marketing stuff, Apache has a hint of respectability because it's free and seems to do a good job while Linux is really UNIX and has lurking been around the edges long enough that its credentials are firmly entrenched. So Open Source is OK for some HTML stuff, but what about real software...

And the answer is that 'real software' is hardly ever Open Source, in part because the business model of a software vendor requires that people pay so the vendor can make a profit. Therefore, you won't often find the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com or SAP getting into bed with the Free Software Foundation to promote applications that you can install for free¹.

But also because as a CIO, a large part of your job is risk management. And it doesn't look so good on the Corporate Risk Register if your software is supported by a bunch of hippy geeks via a loosely moderated Wiki over which you have absolutely zero commercial control.

So have I offended the numerous vendors of 'real software' apps that are Open Source? Probably not, because they know as well as I do that unless you can figure out a way to make money from the services around an Open Source product, you're not going to be in business for long.

And that's really the only point of difference between Open Source and a traditional software application vendor in terms of purchasing - Open Source providers don't usually make money selling a license². Closed Source (is that even an industry term? Yep, a quick Wikipedia search reveals that it is!) vendors do make money selling a license.

Apart from that, both typically make money selling professional services, and may make money selling support and help desk.

In fact, how you purchase Open Source software is really only the icing on the cake, so to speak. The 100% diametrically opposed world view between Open Source and commercial software is that in the Open Source world, the source code - the language that makes the application work - remains visible to anyone who wants to see. And any enhancements, changes, upgrades, revisions or whatever are also visible for anyone who wants to see.  You can't own the exclusive rights to the source code and hoard it against the prying eyes of the world.

This is an upside if you want to get in under the hood and play around, though think through the implications if you embed intellectual property that your company uses to maintain its sales edge because the license agreement says you have to make that visible to the world (which includes your competition obviously).

BTW, it can be a downside if your IT team likes to play and poke around. Ask yourself if you are a software company, because if you aren't it's doubtful your change management process will cope with programmers enhancing your Open Source platforms and in next to no time you're IT team will have hacked and whacked your apps into such a state you'll wish you'd never agreed to installing that 'free' software in the first place.

But I digress and by now you're probably cursing me for not answering the damn question I posed in the first place - is Open Source is Enterprise Grade?

Of course, the answer depends on the product, not "Open Source" as a whole. There are some Open Source products that I won't use, even though they are free, because they aren't any good. As there are many commercial products that I won't use because they aren't any good.

But there are any number of Open Source products with such a strong support contract that the risk is essentially the same as commercial software.

So the take away from all this is that Open Source can be Enterprise Grade. It just depends from whence it's sourced and who is supporting it.

1. Yes, I know that Oracle now owns MySQL through its acquisition of Sun, but it is still early days in terms of the shakeout from this acquisition.  Also, it's ironic that vendors will promote Open Source, just not for their part of the sale. So, most ERP vendors will tout their application running on Open Source stalwarts Red Hat Linux and MySQL, but fully expect you to hand over significant sums of your hard earned readies for their part of the puzzle.

2. Sigh. Nothing is ever that black and white. The GNU Project, one of the major proponents of Open Source, notes "Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can." So you can make a living selling licenses for Open Source, but it's hugely difficult to do so when your product is freely available...for free!