Business Considers Open Source on Par with Commercial Software

quad4b writes "At the International Conference on COTS-based Software Systems in Spain last week, representatives from organizations such at the Software Engineering Institute (remember the CMM), National Research Council of Canada and the European Software Institute discussed the inclusion of Open Source Software for the first time on the conference agenda. COTS software includes stuff like commercial operating systems, desktop software, and ERP systems among others. The conference examined best practices for integrating these pre-built components in systems development efforts. They conceded that open source software is essentially no different from commercially built software and that both types have their risks in terms of supportability and security. (what opponents of OSS say is its weakness) Interestingly enough, a senior representative of IBM was present and discussed with some of us, over lunch, how IBM is determined to move to an open desktop based on Linux and OpenOffice within about a year."

Repetition

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't IBM say that LAST year? Do they mean it this time?

The lines are blurrier, now

[SunFan]

With IBM-backed Linux, OpenSolaris on the way, decent open source J2EE along side commercial J2EE, etc. the lines between suitable commercial software and open source software are somewhat blurry. The bar where someone has to start paying for their software is much higher, now, than it ever used to be, that much is certain.

Re:Same risks?

[KillerDeathRobot]

Why? The truthfulness of those statements hasn't changed, nor has the fact that repeating something enough times will make some people believe you.

IBM is a good barometer

[192939495969798999]

IBM has historically been a good barometer for change. Generally, if a company as big as IBM is going for it, a lot of other people will go for it. They adopted MS-DOS for the PC, and look what happened with that!

For OSS, COTS = Complete-Off-The-Server

[G4from128k]

It may not be "commercial", but OSS is more complete than its proprietary competition. All jokes about self-documenting code aside, I'd rather have access to the source code than to some vendor's documentation of what they think their code does. Seeing inside the box is useful when an API contains undocumented "features."

it depends on your needs

[m2bord]

sometimes open source software works better than a commercial product...ie...the gimp, apache, open office.

and sometimes non-open software is better...i.e. macromedia's flash.

and until someone creates a non-open or open equivilent.

Re:IBM is a good barometer

[MarkRose]

Apple is a far better company to watch for change. They were the first to manufacture a useful PC (the Apple II). They were the first to manufacture a PC with a GUI (the Mac). They were the first to make PCs with a network connection by default (the Mac). They were the first PC company to move to RISC CPUs (the PowerPC). They were the first to remove the floppy. They were the first PC company to ship and OSS-based OS on all their machines.

While IBM may have more clout in the business world, it's Apple that sets trends. Watch what Apple does.

Commercial versus open source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source software IS (or can be) commercial software. The dichotomy is open source vs proprietary.

Get it right next time please.

And on that note, free software is (or can be) commercial software. If you don't believe me ask Redhat, Novell and Sun. They have been selling free software for years.