Challenge Posed by Open Source in Enterprises

By: infotechalive June 28, 2022

We have heard about the Challenge Posed by Open Source in Enterprises. Now let’s have a deeper understanding on that matter. It is a fairly clear understanding that open source holds the key to the future of software development. However, the fact also remains that IT professionals still face a lot of hurdles while trying to incorporate the open source culture in organizations. The business practices which had been developed years back for supporting the commercial aspect have become the bane for open source.

Open Source – Commercial

The codes which are freely available have a business model which helps the company to make money out of the free codes. These commercial contracts are offered by the main contributors, developers or the maintainer who is responsible for the repository.

A major blockage which is faced regarding this is that these codes can be easily duplicated into another version as these are freely available for use. These are then used as competitive standpoints against the original software. These commercial versions do not hold the accountability and level of expertise as the maintainer of the original. These businesses might achieve profits in comparison to the original by undercutting the price point but it affects the quality of the open source product in the long run.

Open source, in itself is not a business model and the managed services work as a commercial wrapper only. The open source commercial companies are looking towards SaaS as the future of the software products offering.

The legal side of open source in enterprises contracts dealt with the procurement process when the adoption process had just been initiated. These purchases underwent a process of being bought wherein the trend saw the purchases of commercial software licenses. The digital drive has taken a massive shape now and software developers have become the ultimate superheroes. Businesses had always tried to incorporate software licenses to their open source products and that did not make much sense as the software already had a license attached with it. Developers do not have to go through the legal dealings like these and they can function freely in their zone.