Open Source

“Open-Source” application development philosophy has the potential to revolutionise development and sharing of information for business and throughout society” (H. Pattinson, 2004).

Discuss business and marketing issues associated with emergence of an “Open-Source” approach as preferred policy - initially for business and government-related application development - and then for more broad business and societal information/knowledge development and sharing.

Open Source requires the source code of computer software to be made available openly for study, modification and improvement in its design through the availability of its source code under an open source license (Wikipedia, 2005). An open source license is certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) which is an unincorporated non-profit research and educational association with the mission to own and defend Open Source trademark and advance the cause of Open Source Software (OSS).
Open source does not only mean access to source code. The distribution terms must comply with the following criterion
Free Redistribution ( by constraining the license to require free redistribution, short term gains are eliminated in favour of long term gains)
Source Code ( access code facilitates modification and hence evolution of programs)
Derived Work ( modifications and derived work must be distributed on the same terms as the original work)
Integrity of the Authors Source Code
No Discrimination against People and Groups
No Discrimination against Fields of Endeavour
Distribution of License
License must not be specific to a product
License must not restrict other software
License must be technology neutral
(Open source Initiative, 2005)
The open source business model has its focus on creating value. The profits are centered on the service of the products (as opposed to the selling price of the product) with different revenue sources and different pricing strategies. This strategy makes sense if your value proposition is not in the software itself but the service and expertise associated with the software.

The first challenge for the open-source entrepreneur is mobilizing top notch programmers. In some cases, when no viable commercial alternatives exist or when they are too expensive, it may, in fact, be easier to attract top programmers to open-source projects than to commercial development. Developers of standard off-the-shelf software often find it difficult to judge whether a product feature will have a major impact on satisfying user needs, and they also recognize that users often have difficulty expressing their needs. As a result, the high development (and marketing) costs for standard packaged software typically cause software firms to spread these costs among a large population of users.
Because project learning in the open-source world is transparent for others to see, a project accumulates the development efforts of volunteer users and seems to encourage the software’s diffusion in order to build a developer’s reputation and spread the products.

In the short to medium terms, some managers may encourage the use of open-source software in their own firms. Others may attempt to build a business based on distributing and servicing open-source software. Us based Red Hat and German based SuSE, which distribute Linux software, serve as templates for such activity. Other companies may sell computer hardware running open-source software, such as IBM, which offers Linux as an option. Managers may also try to reduce development costs and boost software standards by using the open-source software development model. Such an example is Sun Microsystem’s decision to rely on open-source methods to develop and distribute Java. There are also potential advantages to a model whereby resources used for innovation are widely distributed throughout the world. Also, the value of specialization through self-selection and how norms of meritocracy and peer recognition help ensure product quality.

For company to use the open-source software, more flexibility to adapt it to their business needs.

Other application benefit is the online research, Open-source collaboration methodology. In the world of academic survey research, a form of “open-source” methodology reigns. Survey data and methodology are fully disclosed and shared. While we certainly lack of a single unified survey methodology analogous to the Mozilla browser or Unix operating system, academic survey researchers have reached broad consensus around the set of “ best practices” on many issues. Moreover, the “source code” of academic survey research is free and available to all practitioners to modify as they see fit.