Should cost-conscious managers take advantage of the treasure trove on offer with open source software?
Something for nothing always sounds attractive, especially when you are looking for savings. Public services spend an estimated £17bn a year on ICT, a sizeable proportion of which goes on acquiring and maintaining software.
There is a way to make huge savings on these bills – ‘open source software’ offers the potential to use applications free of licence fees.
The simplest way to understand this is to compare it with proprietary software, such as Microsoft Office. You can’t just copy and use proprietary software; its use is restricted by its owners. You must buy a licence or pay a licence fee each year, or both. You are not allowed to share it or to access the source code without the owner’s agreement. It also carries the risk of being tied to a single supplier, and therefore potentially ‘locked in’ to price increases and restrictions.
Open source software by contrast is published under a licence that gives its users the freedom to use, share and modify the software. It is not necessarily free but usually the maximum costs are minimal distribution charges. This software is typically created as a collaborative effort in which programmers improve existing code and share changes within the development community.
The community then usually relies on ‘peer review’ processes, where users and developers find and eliminate bugs in the programmes.
In effect, companies/organisations offer their software enhancements free of charge and for general use. Enthusiasts claim that when they need additional ‘functionality’ – such as a bug fix or an enhancement – there is a high probability that this will be freely available online. There are also professional firms that specialise in supporting and developing open source.
Most software applications have open source equivalents. For example, Open Office is similar to Microsoft Office and Firefox is an alternative to the Internet Explorer web browser. One of the most prominent examples of free source and open source development is the Linux operating system. It is mainly known for its use in servers and is supported by major corporations such as IBM, Novell, Oracle and Red Hat. It is also used as an operating system for a wide variety of hardware, including desktop computers, supercomputers and video games.
In February 2009, the Cabinet Office published the Open source action plan. This promised that the government would actively and fairly consider open source solutions alongside proprietary ones on the basis of value for money, taking account of the total lifetime cost of ownership, including exit and transition costs. According to some in the open source industry, the shift from proprietary standards could save the government £600m a year.
The main question with open source software is: ‘What happens if something goes wrong – who supports the software?’ If the answer is a lone developer, or a community of freelance developers spread across several countries, you might not want to use it for business critical applications. But you might consider it suitable if it provides basic functionality, with lots of existing users and robust support arrangements.
Overall, with software and support, you get what you pay for and there is a business judgement to be made about the balance between overall costs and risks over the expected life cycle of the software. Other reasons for considering open source include reducing dependency on one supplier and looking for greater flexibility to meet specific functional requirements.
I have attended several briefings expecting to emerge as a complete convert to open source but this has never happened. Judging from a recent survey of local government, many IT decision makers feel the same. The survey did show that this software was now widely used in local government and 42% of respondents expected this to increase over the next three years. However, an overwhelming 98% stated that the PC provided by their employer ran a Microsoft Windows operating system and 95% used Microsoft Office.
As with all of these types of assessments, it is important to build an objective business case once all the options, costs and risks have been defined.
John Thornton is an independent adviser and writer, the executive director of e-ssential Resources and a member of the CIPFA IT Panel
