The Myths of Open Source

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BY MALCOLM WHEATLEY

"THE BOTTOM LINE
Is open source right for every organization? In the end, argues Andy Mulholland, chief technology officer for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, it's a question of attitude. "The arguments for and against open-source software often get very trivialized," he says. "It's not a technology issue; it's a business issue to do with externalization."

Companies with an external focus, he says, which are used to working collaboratively with other organizations, and perhaps are already using collaborative technologies, stand to gain much more from open source than companies with an internal focus, which see the technology in terms of cost savings.

"The lesson of the Web is that standardization is better than differentiation," Mulholland claims. "Is there a virtue in doing things differently? Is there a virtue in doing things the same way as everybody else?" As the past decade has shown, standardization with a proprietary flavor—think Microsoft—has its drawbacks: bloatware, security loopholes, eye-popping license fees and an unsettling reliance upon a single vendor. In offices around the globe, an era of open-source standardization, determined to condemn such drawbacks to history, may be dawning."