The future of open source

David M Williams
Thursday, 27 March 2008 06:44

Opinion and Analysis

Conversely, the survey found that the area least likely to suffer any disruption by open source software in the immediate future are the security tools market.

On the one hand this is a surprising result with such excellent tools available as wireshark, snort, nmap and more. These have been an essential part of any penetration tester or system admin’s toolkit for a long time.

Yet, on the other hand it is perhaps unsurprising that the openness of open source security tools may be perceived as a vulnerability with critical code being freely viewable by all. Additionally, proprietary vendor-provided security tools can make use of secret device- or platform-specific information that only the developer has access to. A negative perception may also exist that because the bulk of open source security apps are lean, targeted command-line tools they generally lack the arguably bulky polish and finesse of a commercial product along with a graphical interface.

It also certainly would not help matters that good and useful, but non-proprietary, security tools are flagged as “hack tools” by products like Symantec Anti-Virus and duly deleted from user’s computers upon detection. This is an issue that raises the ire of developers and security professionals alike, and presumably is far less likely to happen for releases that have the weight of a large company behind them.

The survey yielded other insights:

According to respondents, the top three factors which make open source software compelling are lower acquisition and maintenance costs; flexibility and access to libraries of community-developed code; and freedom from vendor lock-in.

Over 55% of respondents believe that within five years 25% to 50% of all purchased software will be open source, as opposed to proprietary systems. Personally, I’d have liked to see this question with more finely-grained responses. Arguably, 25% to 50% is an impressive figure but it would be more so if it were known the results were skewed more to the 50% end than the 25% end.

An intriguing survey question indicated that 65% of respondents believe that within two years we’ll see another open source company with the stature of Red Hat. It is possible this could be another Linux distro vendor with Ubuntu being a possibility, or, given the major finding it may well turn out to be an organisation of the likes of Acquia.

Interestingly, approximately 81% of respondents felt that economic turbulence leads to greater adoption and advocacy of open source solutions. This stands to reason and is consistent with the felt reasons people turn to open source in the first instance, namely it offers protection from vendor lock in particularly if there is a risk a vendor may cease trading. With open source software there is no need to negotiate complex escrow arrangements; the code is there. If the person or persons or entity who provides it can no longer do so. There is no risk of losing access to years of sensitive and important company data. There is no risk of having an abandoned product which cannot be modified.

So, this is the future: open source will continue to gain a foothold and is becoming more and more a realistic option for enterprises particularly as its risk-averse nature is recognised. In particular, the pundits believe, we will see open source especially dominate the content management system and web publishing space, but conversely proprietary tools will still reign in the security space.

What do you think? Is this the future of open source as you see it? Do you agree with the survey respondents and the panel? Tell us about it.