Open Source Software: Here's What They’re Not Telling You.
The subject of “open source vs closed source” insights a passion in even the most introverted of technologists - both sides are un-wielding in their opinions, however, such debates are insignificant without a context for comparison.
What do I mean by context - I’m referring to a basis for comparison and consideration such as the use case, the business size, the skills of resources to operate the solution or the applicable industry.
There’s no one size fits all with respect to any tool that I have found, software or otherwise - a sledgehammer has its purpose, just as a carpentry hammer has its. Would you use a general purpose carpenter's hammer to knock down a concrete block wall? Or a sledgehammer to knock in nails? The answer is no - you might try if you had no other choice, but neither would do a very good job.
In this post, I want to provide you with a framework to assess “your context” for businesses grappling with this very decision to assist them in analyzing the decision between open source or closed software platform.
All cards on the table
Prior to getting into this article, I feel that I should provide you with “my context” for this post.
At the time of writing I am heavily involved from with a SaaS CMS solution - I founded Coredna. I work with many companies and partners that have or are in the process of implementing this platform solution.
But I don't dislike open source; we use open source components in our platform and much of our infrastructure is open source or a commercial version of an open source project, such as MYSQL, PHP and Apache. I also recommend clients other open source software/platforms when their needs are not well served with our own solution. Likewise, I assisted my brother to move his ecommerce website to Weebly when we figured out that Coredna was not a right fit for his jewellery business.
I am software agnostic! I laugh writing this as I have sat in so many meetings with various digital agencies when they have said to me, “We’re software agnostic at ….”.
That aside, I am writing this second post as an update to my original post many years ago. I want to dispel many beliefs that I believe to have been incorrectly perpetuated without any relevant “context”, such as:
- Open source software is completely free
- Open source is more flexible than closed source
- Closed source is expensive
- Open source software is a security risk
- Code ownership is critical to every business
One other last thing that I want to declare is that, in my humble opinion, once you ‘customize’ your open source code - that you are pretty much in the ‘closed source’ camp - We'll get to that later.…
What are we talking about
You might have heard or read of many of these terms, yet not fully understood - skip straight on to this section if you have.
CMS
CMS is an acronym for Content Management System, which is software that allows a user to create and publish content to the web without code such as HTML or CSS. In its most simplistic form, the goal of a CMS is to provide the user with an easy user interface to manage the:
- Creation and modification of web pages
- Appearance of published web pages
- The structure of a website
- User permissions of the CMS
As of May 1st 2017, the most commonly implemented CMS software is WordPress. Of websites using a CMS (also sometimes referred to as a WCMS - Web Content Management System), 58.9% of those are using WordPress.
Open source
Open source software is commonly referred to as providing ‘open’ access to the software’s source code. It allows users to copy and modify parts of the code with no consequence. There are some other ‘technical’ requirements in order to meet the requirements of open source - the full definition of open source can be found on the Open Source Initiatives website.
Well known examples of open source CMS solutions include WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento.
Closed source
Closed source, also referred to as ‘proprietary software’ is software source code that is generally not published publicly or that is not redistributable without cost.
There are some types of closed source that provide access to their source code, either publicly or to registered or approved person/bodies/groups, however, there are restrictions on its use, modification, and redistribution.
The evolution of close source has been greatly accelerated with the movement away from large self-managed Enterprise software solutions to SaaS applications.
SaaS
SaaS is an acronym for Software as a Service and is sometimes referred to as ‘on-demand software’ - it is a licensing and delivery model for software whereby the software is licensed on a subscription basis. The user generally interacts with the application by a web browser and the provider usually maintains the operating and application environment.
Website
“A website is a collection of related web pages, including multimedia content, typically identified with a common domain name and published on at least one web server” as defined by Wikipedia. A website can be a public site accessible on the internet or a private site that is accessible via user credentials on the internet or a private local area network
The 3 ways to obtain technology software
You have three choices when it comes to creating and managing software. Before you go about choosing one of these options, you must understand the problem that needs to be solved using the software.
Take into account strategic goals, external partners and required systems support. This will tremendously help you decide which approach would best suit your requirements.
You ‘buy’ the technology
You pay some company for a platform that has all the functionalities you need, and that’s about it. Everything else is taken care of.
Buying software not only saves you time, but also maximizes your employee resources and lets you customize the platform with a specific functionality to meet your business needs.
Every business has unique requirements. Some are looking for accounting or scheduling, others may just want customer relationship management.
An extreme example is Salesforce.
Salesforce buys software companies that have the technology they can reuse for its customers. Last year, they purchased Demandware, a cloud ecommerce company, for $2.8 BILLION to help grow their ecommerce offerings.
There are a number of other software companies that offer a buy option for their platforms.
Once you’ve paid for the software, all you need to do is get someone onboard to manage it or train your existing employees to work with the platform.
Just like with any technology, it has its advantages and disadvantages: