Atos Consulting Look Out | Open Source Software (OSS )

Concept

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) includes free software of Open Source origins, and Commercial Open Source Software.
This is a software solution for which the human-readable source code is made available, thus permitting the users to use, change, improve, or redistribute it in a modified or unmodified form. This is subject to flexible licensing conditions that promote knowledge redistribution.
OSS solutions are an alternative solution to classic proprietary commercial solutions, such as office tools, CRM, operating systems, databases, or collaboration software.
Recently, OSS has become pervasive with proprietary providers reaping the benefits, leading Gartner to predict that by 2012, some 80% of commercial software will include some embedded element of OSS.

Trajectory

Open standards to promote interoperability between many vendors.
Flexibility in-pricing schemes where it is possible to pay for support and updates, or use free software if in-house expertise exists.
Free access to source enables rapid tailoring and bug-fixing, also future-proofing the product.
A technically better product through open scrutiny of the source code and a more important ‘natural selection’ system not present in proprietary software.
Reliability is increased and enhanced by the widespread and diverse levels of testing undertaken. Security vulnerabilities and bugs tend to be fixed more rapidly.
Support can be obtained from a number of different sources (whether in-house expertise or commercial subscription), giving a wider choice for the user community.
Application areas—operating systems (server and desktop), developer tools, application servers, databases, CRM, network-routing, and security tools now moving into almost all aspects of IT selection.
Migrating to OSS for certain applications attracts specialist and preferential support—SAP’s reference development platform is based on OSS which attracts priority support.

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