Opinion: Reasons To Shun Open Source-ryOpinion: Reasons To Shun Open Source-ry

I'll admit much of what follows could be called Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. While FUD is something vendors do to discredit each other, my sources were experienced users of open source and Linux products. FUD can be an effective marketing tool, but it doesn't fix the problem. That being said, here are some of the key issues I believe are being covered up.

Too Much Litigation Risk: Not only is there risk from the SCO lawsuit, but I also received reports of many lawsuits brought by employers against their own employees for overzealous inclusion of the employers' proprietary code in open-source distributions. The SCO lawsuits, at the very least, show that discovery is incredibly easy with an open source product. In order to sue for intellectual property violations, you often have to get your hands on the source code of the defendants' products. That requires convincing a court to force the defendant to turn over the source code in a process called "discovery"; that process can be difficult. The pain associated with getting hold of proprietary source code is one of the things that limits intellectual property lawsuits for commercial software. But with open source software, the code is already available, out in the open. IBM, despite its representations that there is no risk, is not taking on the related liability of its clients. In fact, of contracts reviewed by the Yankee Group, only Microsoft has language that provides for this indemnification. Given the risk, I think every software vendor should provide indemnification for intellectual property risk, open source or not. There should be much more information on how to avoid this increasing exposure. If I'm concerned about being sued, I want information on how to protect myself, and not from someone who lacks legal experience or doesn't face a similar level of exposure. Job Risk: Giga Information Group recently identified offshore outsourcing as one of the biggest trends in our industry. It singled out open source as the strongest technology driver for offshore outsourcing. I don't know about you but I'm not planning on moving to India any time soon, and I have a hard time feeling comfortable backing an initiative that puts my clients' jobs at risk, let alone my own. I have a feeling that if my clients lose their jobs to lower-paid workers overseas, I'm going to lose my income base. I don't see that as a good thing. Behavior: Too many people think it is OK to use inappropriate language and behavior when arguing their point. Worse, when people go to open source forums with legitimate questions, they are often pilloried or subjected to some kind of hazing process. Many open-source developers respond as if new participants on a site are interlopers. I've blasted Microsoft and Dell for behavior that is trivial in comparison, so I don't see any point in treating open source differently. To my mind, there is no excuse for bad behavior. Free: In many e-mails, the word "free" was used to describe open-source products. Some went so far as to say that paying for "ones and zeros" disgusted them. Frankly, I started to wonder if these folks slept through the dot-com years, or if they could even spell "economics." Labor costs money, as we've learned over time. It is clear that open source is a strong, low-cost replacement for Unix, and that most packaged applications for Linux and BSD cost the same as their Unix counterparts. The savings with open-source software mostly come from being able to use Intel and AMD server hardware rather than the more expensive proprietary servers required to run most Unix operating systems. But if management is expecting open source projects to be free, how do you exceed that expectation? The big enterprise software companies don't give away their applications, not even for Linux and open source. Assuming you want to advance in your company, why put yourself at risk by setting an impossible expectation? Here's more e-mail input from people who've used the products: Linux has lousy user interfaces; no roadmap or clear escalation path; incompatibilities between distributions; IBM, HP and others are all usurping the process. All platforms have problems. My concern is over what appears to be a user effort to cover up these problems. In the end, I see open source at a crossroads. The open-source community can either step up and address its faults, or continue to work furiously to cover them up and go the way of OS/2. I truly hope but sincerely doubt enough of you will make the right choice. Rob Enderle heads the Enderle Group, a company that will formally launch in September of 2003. He has been an external IT analyst since 1993. He is contemplating building an open source-free saferoom in his solar-powered home. He can be reached at [email protected].