The Open Source Value Proposition

According to Gartner research, “by 2015, ninety-nine percent of mission-critical applications in Global 2000 companies will contain open source.” Open Source Software (OSS) has been around for over two decades and it is fair to say that it has now gone mainstream. A lot of organizations are adopting OSS to support their innovation initiatives, to accelerate development time and ultimately to create a competitive advantage that any organization is looking to achieve today. Although OSS is being widely adopted, often organizations are challenged with the risks and strategic implications associated with such technology. What are the main benefits of using OSS compared to proprietary software and what makes OSS an attractive value proposition for organizations?

Innovation

OSS generally refers to any source code or programs that can be “freely” used, changed and shared by anyone “free” of charge. OSS typically results from the work of programmers that share their codes with a community for “free”. One of the major differences with proprietary software is that people that engage in open source development projects are doing it on the “free” of charge basis. Free in term of cost but also free in term of choice.

This difference significantly drives people that engage in Open Source projects, in term of motivation, commitment and dedication. Consequently, community members are usually highly passionate and engaged in developing OSS projects. Some research shows that passion and collaboration are ones of the key components of the innovation processes, and in that respect open source communities provide an incredible platform to nurture innovation and talents.

According to the recent 2015 future of open source survey (, “9 in 10 respondents say that open source greatly impact the speed of innovation”. The same survey shows that more than 50% of engineers working in largs are working on an open source project and that half of them use OSS projects to hire top talents that open source the speed of innovation”.

Transparency

Transparency is also at the heart of the open source value proposition. Unlike Proprietary Software that are delivered based on a promise and specifications, OSS allow any organization and user to review and test the software before committing and investing in it. They can review the codes, edit, modify, fix and customize them based on their own needs. Open Source allows users to pick and choose the part of the software they actually need and to strip it down to fit their requirements. Additionally, software quality and performance can be compared based on different organization standards or industry benchmarks.

Openness and transparency are key to the open source value proposition as they participate to strengthen its credibility and provide added confidence for organization in adopting such technology.

Scalability

Scalability and reliability are also central to the open source value proposition. Scalability is defined as a software’s ability to continue to function well and meet the user’ need when coping with an increase in size and volume.

Open Source is used every day by almost everyone. From Android to Apache, NGINX, Linux, PHP, MySQL or Drupal and WordPress, to name just a few, small and large organizations across the world rely on OSS to run their business operations and to interact with customers. According to the latest 2015 future of open source survey, 58% of respondent “believe open source provides the greatest ability to scale”.

Flexibility

Flexibility also provides a great value add for organizations. Flexibility in an open source environment parties vendors. Open Source communities creates their own standards and as they become widely used more developers and providers are adopting it. This provides opportunities for an organization to widen their service provider’s portfolio and avoid being tied up with a specific vendor.

Security

Security concerns are probably ranked on top of the list when it comes to OSS. The bottom line is that there is no software that are 100% secure whether open source or proprietary software. Although proprietary software prevent piracy and duplication by protecting their code, it does not prevent them to be hacked, it just makes it more difficult, but hackers love that challenge don’t they?