Why we believe in open source

Even though the reduction of software costs of ownership (TCO) is an undeniable advantage deriving from the adoption of an open-source solution, considering just the economic side hinders the perception of other equally important advantages connected to the open-source philosophy.

RedTurtle Technology truly believes in this approach, so much as to release the source code also for applications it develops in closed-source environments. Actually, we are not the only ones convinced that, in a growing number of situations, open-source solution are the only ones capable to fulfill Customer’s requirements. We think that the following explanations will make you share our point of view.

Open source: the response to a critical scenario

According to an ASSINFORM report, Small / Medium Businesses and Local Public Administrations can’t find a software offer fit for their specificities, and for their economic possibilities affected by increasing budget cutbacks. The costs to be faced include:

• costs for application software licenses,
• costs for installation / customization services in the Business / Organization.

On their part, the about 10 thousand Small Italian Businesses offering application software and services,

• suffer from small size and small number of customers,
• and today many (too many!) cannot update or maintain the application that they offered / are offering

point of view.

The Customer’s new awareness and new expectations

Since Internet entered our houses, the ICT awareness of single individuals, let alone of the Customers with ICT needs, has grown. The perception of what is “normal” and what information technologies can do has changed.

“Consumer-centric Innovation”

• 1986: l’ICT was in the Universities and in the Business
• 2006: l’ICT is in the houses

Utility Computing = Broadband

• We know what broadband is for the consumer: video, mp3, foto, ecc
• We don’t know what broadband is for the business: there are no services exploiting it

“Do It Yourself ICT”

• Informatics as “do-it-yourself” of  web/local applications
• End of “structured” approach consulting – planning - development
• One takes for granted that there is always someone who makes the system work (Google is always on!) 

“Business Risk-Adverse; Consumer Risk-Taker”

This sentence from Prof. Micelli of Venice University, summarizes in short the concept that the consumer market, along with High-Performance computing and simulation / analytics software, is focused on “competitive advantage”, and thus is the main drive of technological development and innovation. For this, the consumer market – in technological terms – is a Risk-taker.

On the other side, classic business software (ERP, Pay Rolls, Data Warehouse, CRM) is evaluated mainly, if not exclusively, in terms of cost-effectiveness. Requirements vary slowly with time, and this configures a “conservative”, technologically Risk-adverse environment.

As a consequence, predictably the classic business models that predominated in the business software market will not be able to respond adequately to the new expectations nor to the new awareness of the Customers.

 What do Customers ask for, today?

• End of “vendor lock-in”: leaning on a single provider means being, to a greater or lesser degree, pressured and constrained to a technical evolution that responds more to the provider’s than to the Customer’s needs.
• To be the owner of one’s own data! Using closed standards for data means that any opening towards the external world will imply expenditure, and that ad-hoc software will be needed.
• Choice, Interoperability: being able to let different applications coexist, or to cast legacy application into a new dimension of accessibility and integration.
• Innovation, to redefine cost-effectiveness

A new business model

In the last few years, favored by Internet, a new way for creating software and the associated business model have risen exponentially: Open-Source.

Software is jointly produced from many different actors, is protected by innovative legal instruments, and as a consequence is free.

The new model emphasizes the offer of services – with fee – for the effective utilization of the open source free applications in the Businesses / Organizations.

Italy, both for the very high number of Small / Medium Businesses, and for the equally high number of small IT businesses, could gain an extraordinary impulse from this model.

Why the Open Source culture will triumph?

*“[...]The open-source culture will triumph not because cooperation is morally right or software "hoarding" is morally wrong (assuming you believe the latter, which neither Linus nor I do), but simply because the commercial world cannot win an evolutionary arms race with open-source communities that can put orders of magnitude more skilled time into a problem" (Source: *Eric Raymond - The cathedral and the bazaar)

Some Open Source numbers (as of September 2007):

• +462M coders.com code lines
• +2M JavaVM lines
• 200M$ 2006 venture capitalist investments in Open Source Software
• 30 download/sec Firefox 2 from the release
• 610M Google pages about OSS
• 7 OSS components in MS WinXP
• 61M Apache sites
• 71% developers using OSS

Developing competitive and technological advantages in a “4 win” view

The open-source advantage, ultimately, is fourfold:

• win for ICT service providers: the “product market” becomes one thing with “service market”, and opportunities multiply.
• win for ICT service customers: they benefit from custom-made solutions, avoiding the hindrances of classic business models, and investing directly in customization.
• win for ICT professionals: every open solution is the starting point of a possible customization, and every occasion of system integration among open systems, or with closed-source or legacy systems, is an opportunity for professionals living on added value offered to the Customer.
• win for the national economic system: in terms of cost optimization, valorization of national intellectual resources, of integration potential and of modernization, it’s the whole country who’s winning.

A role for Local public Administration: accelerating transformation

The recent tendencies of the CNIPA (National Committee for ICT in the Public Administration) towards the open-source world prove the maturity and reliability of those solutions. Public Administration will be able, and some are already able, to be the driving force behind the success of this business model. In fact, Local Public administrations can:  

• Favor the using, the emersion and the consolidation of open-source projects
• Provide incentives for the businesses supporting territorial enterprises’ open-source development projects
• Aggregate local actors in an international view:
• Universities and High Schools
• Software professionals
• Banks
• Entrepreneurs’ Associations