The Business Benefits of Open Source

Open Development Means Increased Security

In a world where a cyber crime is being committed every 38 seconds (2244 times a day), protecting data and maintaining site security is a huge problem. Large security events such as the 2014 Home Depot Breach, which caused the loss of 56 million credit card numbers, can cause losses and liabilities totaling tens of millions of dollars; and the compromise of sensitive systems, such as the personnel database of the US government (which included personal details, such as if they held security clearances) is exposed, can be disastrous for an organization to recover from. So what security benefits does Open Source provide?

In answering this question, it's important to note that OSS code is not defect-free and will still have security problems, but the way it is developed can provide enormous security benefits.

1. Because it is developed in the open, reviewed, and tested thoroughly; anyone is able to contribute a fix for a problem. If there is a question about how a feature works, it's possible to look at the source code and answer the question directly. Some projects -- such as the Linux Kernel, Kubernetes, and Open Stack -- receive contributions from thousands of individuals, and hundreds of people may look at the source code daily. This collaborative process provides a way for serious issues to receive scrutiny and for difficult problems to be fixed. Linus Torvalds famously said, "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." Open development is what helps get the eyeballs looking at the code.
2. When security flaws are found, they are often patched immediately. When a vulnerability was found in the Log4J library (which is used to provide logging capabilities to programs written in the Java language), fixes for the problem were available within two weeks of it being discovered and three days before it was even revealed to the general public. Contrast that to the PrintNightmare vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. First discovered in June of 2021, it allowed a standard user to execute code on an affected machine through a vulnerable printer driver. The issue wasn't fully patched for several months, despite widespread media coverage and attention.

No Vendor Lock-In

When using a proprietary software, it happens far too often that business and developers become "locked in" to a software package. This means paying a (usually large) sum of money yearly to hold licensing rights for a critical program that powers an important part of the business. Vendor lock-in can come in many forms, but often is due to the difficulty of exporting or accessing data outside of the vendor's solution.

In a proprietary system, there is usually little control over how the software is provided or what it costs; and if the vendors quality of service declines, users are stuck at their mercy. When looking at a sample of 100 software companies in a study from Capiche.com. It was found 67 companies had raised prices of their proprietary system 98% between the years 2008 and 2018. Open source gives users an ability to use a software package without having to accommodate sudden changes in the support model or licensing fees.

Open source programs often support multiple deployment models. There is often an online version which can be accessed using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model (often with multiple vendors to choose from), as well as an option for self-hosting. Because of these choices, there are many options to ensure business continuity and access to data. If the online company decides to cease operations, it is often possible to shift the data to a self-hosted instance of the same software while exploring options. Proprietary systems offer nowhere near the same level of flexibility. Further, because of their open nature, OSS programs often offer application programming interfaces (APIs) and open formats, making it much easier to migrate or integrate with other systems.

Software Quality and Customization

Software exists to be used, and software that works well -- which is easy to extend and integrate -- will be used broadly. OSS often becomes the dominant software within an industry because it works, and if it doesn't, it's possible to contribute improvements. For this reason, open source systems dominate the world of DevOps, Data Science, and more. Perhaps no case study is more illustrative then how Webkit became the most broadly used web rendering engine in the world and open source came to provide the foundation for nearly the entire browser market.

Webkit is a browser engine popularized by Apple which is used in Apple's Safari browser on both the Mac and on iOS devices. But its impact is broader than that. Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge utilize much of the same code, making Webkit one of the most broadly used technologies in the world.

Started in 2001, Webkit was created when Apple became interested in building a native browser for Mac OS X. Don Melton, an engineer on the Apple product team, was looking for technologies capable of providing an HTML rendering foundation and JavaScript execution engine. In his research he came across the KHTML and KJS projects, OSS initiatives of the KDE Desktop community. After inspecting the code, he felt that they provided a clean design, good standards compliance, and a small codebase upon which Apple could build a browser. He created a copy of the KHTML sources and Apple began work. In 2005, Apple made the decision to open source the entirety of Webkit and make it source control servers and bug trackers publicly accessible.

After that, Webkit quickly was integrated into a broad host of products. It was customized for the Blackberry phone browser. PlayStation 3 applications were created from it. Tizen's mobile browser and Amazon's Kindle Reader both used it. Palm used it as the foundation of a new mobile operating system. Then, on April 3, 2013, Google announced it had forked WebCore (one of Webkit's components) to be used in future versions of Google Chrome under the name Blink. As of January 2022, Webkit and Blink are the two most commonly used browser engines accounting for 87.04% of all market share.

As Webkit shows, OSS allows you to tailor software to your needs and if the resulting software works wells, has the potential to be adopted by others who will also contribute. This model gives you better quality of product. While it often starts with users and developers meeting their own needs, OSS provides a way to build a product many will find compelling. This allows users to create a software for themselves, rather than force them to work within the constraints of someone else’s program.

Cost

Open source provides a framework for more cost efficient projects. Generally speaking, software development is expensive. Hiring someone to write custom code, you can expect to pay between $220 to $330 per hour in contracting fees and it is common for projects to run into the millions of dollars. Using open source, it's often possible to find libraries that will provide core features and upon which you can build which has the potential to reduce overhead and cost. This frees developers to focus on the high value aspects of the program while re-using lower-level code.

If an off the shelf open source project meets your needs, it's often to deploy as-is. This is even true for highly specialized software packages, such as those used in medical imaging.

Support

Users of OSS often report higher satisfaction with more options for support than users of proprietary systems. In a recent Forrester Consulting Study, 51% of companies implementing open source saw a better costumer experience and increased satisfaction. Forrester also found that 70% of companies saw reduced timelines and faster product innovation by using OSS. CNET has estimated that organizations using OSS have total savings of $387 billion worldwide. With a proprietary solution you are often stuck at the mercy of a corporation without other options.