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Open source solutions geared toward the enterprise often have thriving communities around them, bound by a common drive to support and improve a solution that both the enterprise and the community benefit from (and believe in). The global communities united around improving these solutions introduce new concepts and capabilities faster, better, and more effectively than internal teams working on proprietary solutions.
Many hands can deliver powerful outcomes. The collective power of a community of talented individuals working in concert delivers not only more ideas, but quicker development and troubleshooting when issues arise.
Open source code means just that—you get full visibility into the code base, as well as all discussions about how the community develops features and addresses bugs. In contrast, proprietary code produced in secrecy may come with unforeseen limitations and other unwelcome surprises. With open source, you’re protected against lock-in risks and can see exactly what you’re getting.
Because there are more eyes on it, the reliability of open source code tends to be superior as well. With a worldwide community supporting a code base—rather than one team within one company—code is developed on online forums and guided by experts. The output tends to be extremely robust, tried, and tested code. In fact, open source code now powers about 90% of the internet and is being rapidly adopted across major enterprises for this reason.
As with reliability, open source software’s code is often more secure because it is much more thoroughly reviewed and vetted by the community (and any issues that do arise tend to be patched more diligently). Long a point of hesitation for enterprise adoption of open source, concerns about security just aren’t an issue today.
With open source code, the sole motivation behind decision making around the direction of a solution is to make the best, most useful product possible. Corporations making proprietary code usually put the bottom line foremost, which is not always ideal. When choosing a technology integral to your business, it’s best to ensure its agenda supports your own interests.
Because open source solutions are openly available and can be explored for free, it’s often much faster to investigate options and get solutions off the ground.
Although open source solutions should be thought of as more than just free software, the fact that they require no licensing fees remains a decisive advantage when looking at the total cost of deploying a solution.
Proprietary software for core infrastructure increases the risk of becoming locked in by the vendor or technology. If this happens, enterprises can be at the mercy of vendors’ price increases and experience a lack of flexibility they can’t easily and readily escape. Enterprises should be careful to use true open source solutions, rather than those from providers that repackage open source software to include proprietary hooks.
The many large enterprises implementing open source solutions—and often making policies out of doing so—are bringing the strength of their resources to the communities that support open source solutions.
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