The Faith in FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)

Bista solutions – Open Source Business Application

 

Bista solutions - Faith in Open source Technology

 

Naturally we always think that free might not be a faithful product or service, especially for companies who look for branded software, but FOSS – Free and open source category of software and technology has changed our mind be- because if we go back to history of Open source software many websites which built on FOSS technology today are consider as successful case studies.

The first case comes in my mind is the Mozilla Firefox the basic Open source browser which we use everyday for browsing more than Google. Again in the same category we have Chrome and Opera.

There are many other classic examples of used of Open source software, like government for cost effectiveness today using FOSS technology. The main advantage of using FOSS is not the cost but it just opens the minds of many to do discoveries in the technological field by providing you with a source code.

Some of the most encouraging news I heard about open source categories in recent time were

  • Gartner report indicating 85% of businesses in North America using Open Source Software, even in mission-critical situations.
  • Forrester Report: Open source delivers cost and quality benefits.
  • Bloomberg: ‘Bill Gates of Belgium’ Fights SAP with Free Software.

It dosent mean that FOSS could always be successful, hence one shoule remember some of the Evaluation criteria of selecting open source software.

  • Strength & financing of the supporting company
  • Open source assurance by the supporting company
  • Activity of the community
  • Maturity of the Product
  • Architecture & technology of the Product
  • Licensing model & feature differences between the paid & community version.
  • Popularity & adoption by business users.
  • Independent reviews & analyses

The above criteria are just the basic and one should research more to adopt the best Open source technology.