Open Source Software as viable alternative to proprietary software - GNU/Linux

Eliot Rosewater

As part of one of my gf's college modules she has to do a small presentation on some loose area of science - social science is included so its pretty broad. Shes decided to to it on GNU/Linux as a viable alternative to proprietary operating systems. I think its an interesting topic!

It was coincidental as just that morning someone posted on the ILUG mailing list about how Specsavers changed over all of their computers to Red Hat Linux last year: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39287602,00.htm

Anyone any interesting takes on this, or know of similar stories? Or even what the issues are in moving towards open source OS's?


From the article it seems that Specsavers would have had to retrain their staff to use Windows Vista anyway, so they opted to move over to Linux. They seem to have saved a lot on licensing fees alone.

BopNiblets

2007 article! They'd be switching to Windows 7 now, hah.

If my mam and some of my aunts can use it, any old eejit can.

That's pretty cool about Specsavers, the French police did the same about 5 years ago and saved €50 million.

Eliot Rosewater

€50 million is significant! The Wiki page on Linux adoption has loads of other well sources examples.

The French Police example exhibits one of the same motivators for moving as in the Specsavers example: cost of retraining for new Microsoft OS's. I also notice that the force had begun using Linux compatible open source software on Windows already, which probably eased the transition immensely. I find that the biggest hurdle in selling people an OS is that they can achieve the same tasks. Its even easier when they can use the same software.

Naikon

The New York Stock Exchange runs on Red Hat Linux if I am not mistaken.
Try and mention how making money can be incorporated into OSS, and that
it's not just the realm of hobbyists.

kippy

I've used red hat and Ubuntu etc however from a corporate perspective I've always wondered what would be the best linux based OS to use and what "domain" based systems do linux provide? For user accounts, PC account, something similiar to Windows Domains where you can control the various aspects of security and the user experience using GPOS. Does Linux have something similar which is as intuitive and reliable?
Even the openoffice documents, are there ways of controlling default actions for saving in office format that can be controlled centrally?
Does the linux offerings have remote help and support options etc.....

Just a few questions I've had myself and ones which would be critical for me in determining open source for business. (I realise opensource for business may not be licensed but the cheaper than MS such as red hat may be)
Most apps in companies nowadays have a web front end and I reckon there would be now issues running any of these in OS software.

ravydavygravy

Naikon wrote: »

The New York Stock Exchange runs on Red Hat Linux if I am not mistaken.
Try and mention how making money can be incorporated into OSS, and that
it's not just the realm of hobbyists.

True - there was a story on slashdot earlier this week saying that 75% of the current linux kernel code is being written by paid employees of companies like redhat, novell, etc...

Dave

probe

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

As part of one of my gf's college modules she has to do a small presentation on some loose area of science - social science is included so its pretty broad. Shes decided to to it on GNU/Linux as a viable alternative to proprietary operating systems. I think its an interesting topic!

Virtually every company on the planet is using open source on more and more applications - Linux/Unix IP/HTML technologies in place of proprietary solutions.

Phone systems are VoIP (SIP) – no longer switched circuit – except in some small business and households still living in the third world.

Gzillions of websites are running on open source software such as Drupal running on LAMP platforms – eg

http://www.economist.com/
http://www.france24.com/en/
http://www.fastcompany.com/
http://www.observer.com/
http://www.berliner.de/
http://www.trocaire.org/
http://asmp.org/
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
………………

Sites using Mongo database:

http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Production+Deployments

one could go on for pages and pages…..

Virtually every business and personal application is being delivered through a browser. Open source has been using html/IP type platforms long before windoze.


Mobile phones are increasingly running on open source – Google Nexus, Apple iPhone (along with all Apple PCs – Apple uses a few slickly designed “webpages” on top of Unix to run the show), and Nokia’s newest phones.

Listen to the netcasts at http://www.twit.tv/floss105 for lots more ideas on what people are doing with open source.

Naikon

I found this commercial on reddit.com/r/linux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XEujPG7Zjw

croo

As others have pointed out nearly everything on the web is based on some open source project somewhere along the line!

And a couple of years back Gartner predicted open source would everywhere http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=593207.

I am involved with the open source Adempiere ERP project, and the last time I checked, we have mere 150 confirmed real world implementations. But, with around 30k downloads a month from SourceForge, I feel certain there are many more. What's interesting is where the interest in Open Source ERP software is coming from. It's hugely popular in South America & Asia - those countries where all future world growth is predicted to happen! This is understandable since many medium sizes business in these regions simply could not afford the likes of SAP even if they wanted so this naturally results in more interest. But some "first world" countries also show great interest, namely the USA and Germany.

The USA tends to be at the cutting edge of all new in software while Germany's interest tends to be in anything that can make their workers even more productive. The potential cost savings can offset their relatively high wages (relative to their real competitors that is... not us ... as far as I can see we are just a tax haven).

I am aware of one US bank (citiBank) that uses an open source business app - for it's expense management (if i remember correctly)... well that's if it citiBank still exists... if not I am sure it was nothing to do with its use of open source

Also, I know that the British bank clearer system (BACS) was rewritten after many decades (of cobol I understood but am not 100%) and the replacement system was develop based on the open source Spring Framework. That's a pretty big sign of approval I think!

I think if you look closely there are many examples of open source being successfully used in businesses - those who tell you otherwise are usually trying to sell you something "closed" that they want to sell you!

Eliot Rosewater

The presentation will intentionally focus on open source examples not directly related to computer technology. One of the first slides will be a summary of where open source is traditionally powerful, namely web server deployments and for use on super computers (89.2% of the top 500 supercomputers use Linux asfaik). The presentation will be about the viability of open source OS's in areas where its not really considered at the moment.

The NYSE is a great example, cheers for that Naikon. It shows that open source can be deployed in areas where business reliability is essential and where a lot of money is switching hands!

probe

Education is another big user of open source - especially on the Continent.

http://moodle.org/

When schools were infected with H1N1 in France late last year they were closed to stop the spread among young people who had no immunity, and many establishments continued to operate over the internet with teachers using google apps and moodle to interact with students at home.

moodle is also big in the German education system.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvCIv5KCbeE

[Google using moodle and grippe as keywords to get examples of the use of open source software for education applications where flu is involved - 121,000 webpages].

dubhthach

kippy wrote: »

I've used red hat and Ubuntu etc however from a corporate perspective I've always wondered what would be the best linux based OS to use and what "domain" based systems do linux provide?

Well there are particular Directory Server products available for example RedHat have their own Directory Server product which is built ontop of LDAP. Heck Unix had directory services back in the 80's with NIS and NIS+ from Sun.

As for New York Stock Exchange, well they would have originally been running on commercial Unix. The adapted Linux not because it was free but because it was cheaper running supported Linux (eg. Redhat) on commodity x86_64 then it was running on commerical Unix on BigIron RISC boxes.

Of course alot of really heavy hitting Oracle sites still rely on Solaris, I know my sister is working on an project rolling out some high end Oracle stuff (multi-million euro project) and it all runs on Solaris/SPARC. Average price of the servers is 80-90k a server and that's before you even start worrying about the Oracle licensing costs.

Khannie

ravydavygravy wrote: »

True - there was a story on slashdot earlier this week saying that 75% of the current linux kernel code is being written by paid employees of companies like redhat, novell, etc...

Dave

I'm surprised it's that low!

niallb

One more recent one for the list.

Allianz switches to redhat - The Australian

TheDoc

I'd advise having a look at the Beaumount hospital case study in relation to open source which you can read freely online.

I was handed it as part of a case study on management.

It ticks all the boxes in relation to something like this.

Resistance from staff moving from a well known product like microsoft to something new.
A large well known hospital moving from windows to open source.


Its a very interesting read, and led the hospital to be an innovator in a number of areas, a key one being digital x-ray viewings.

The most interesting point is the initial saving the company made from installing Open source over the licensed alternatives.

And the money they saved in maintaining all the software over a 5 year period.


The savings were over €100 million if I remember correctly. Might be wrong on that point though.

Dartz

Non corporate personal example.

Xubuntu Linux LAMP server I set up in a virtual machine for a college group project. Did it precisely because I could share the VM out among colleagues, copy it, delete it, screw around with it and do whatever I want without having to worry about it getting pissy over licensing, or the number of concurrent database connections.

And finally, because it took 1 command in terminal to install and configure the guts of the LAMP stack and get it working automatically. Add in phpmyadmin, and we're golden.

Just grab it, install it, copy it, run it. It's so bloody convenient to do this, it's not funny. Setting it up in Microsoft Server, wouldn't have near been as easy or painless (Though We do get Windows server licenses through MSDNAA)

Capt'n Midnight

don't forget projects like openstreetmap.org and it's involvement in getting up to date maps for Haiti

on a similar note is NASA's world wind
http://opensource.arc.nasa.gov/

IIRC anything written by a US government employee ( but not a contractor ) is public domain. Stuff like ddrescue came from them

CERN is also big into free software. The invented the world wide web ,compare it to the failure of AOL and MSN and other private interwebs.

Lots of scientific data is freely available, it wasn't NASA that discovered the dust devils on Mars but rather others using their data.


http://www.top500.org/stats/list/34/os - most of the top 500 supercomputers run on some variant of linux , almost all the rest run on BSD / UNIX
only 1% use windows


The Web is fast and free: fast, in the sense that you can make things happen overnight; and free, in the sense that you don’t need the boss’s permission to implement new ideas. Open source software in a lot of cases means projects can start on a shoe string rather than get board approval.

Another big issue is that Microsoft keep changing the licensing terms and conditions and upgrade paths , this means you have no idea what licenses you will need to buy in 3 years time. If you can upgrade then your existing licenses have value. If you can't upgrade or transfer licenses then you license are worthless. It's an accounting problem but has gone to court in the US with differing opinions on the value of volume licenses when a company has been bought out or gone bust.

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Naikon wrote: »

The New York Stock Exchange runs on Red Hat Linux if I am not mistaken.

We use a variety of RHEL, Solaris 10 and Windows Server 2003 in our Infrastructure. All of the real time stuff is RHEL because windows could not handle it, while the historical stuff is on Windows and the DB stuff is on Solaris.