Advantages:
Open source is a
good way for business to achieve greater penetration of the market. Companies
that offer open source software are able to establish an industry standard and,
thus, gain competitive advantage. .It has also helped build developer loyalty
as developers feel empowered and have a sense of ownership of the end product. Users should be treated as co-developers.
Dynamic decision making structure
.Minimizes vendor lock-in and proprietary systems.
Minimizes capital expenditure and ongoing costs. More control of
overall IT strategy. Open
Source promotes innovation & ensures customization: Through
availability of source code,
Quicker to add features.
Disadvantages:
It is sometimes
said that the open source development process may not be well defined and the
stages in the development process, such as system testing and documentation may
be ignored. Not all OSS initiatives have been successful, for example sour
exchange and Eazel. It is also difficult to design a commercially sound business
model around the open source paradigm. In terms of security, open source may
allow hackers to know about the weaknesses or loopholes of the software more
easily than closed-source software.
Open-source software security is the measure of assurance or
guarantee in the freedom from danger and risk inherent to an open-source software system.
Benefits of open-source security:
More people can inspect the source code to find and fix a possible
vulnerability. This can lead to both faster discovery of unintentional security
vulnerabilities, The end-user of open-source code has the ability to change and
modify source to implement any extra "features" of security they may
wish for a specific use, which can extend to the kernel level if they so wish,
it is assumed that any compiler that is used creates code that can be trusted. Drawbacks of open-source security: All
people have access to the source code, including potential attackers: Simply
making source code available does not guarantee review, having many users look
at source code does not guarantee that security flaws will be found and fixed.
Open software licensing: license defines the rights and obligations
that a licensor grants to a licensee. Open source licenses grant licensees the
right to copy, modify and redistribute source code. Examples Apache License, BSD
license, GNU General
Public License, and Mozilla
Public License.
Business Models: The revenue model: Value creation: definition of the offer
generating the highest willingness to pay. Capture of the value created through: The sale of rights (sale of
patents, licenses or even client files).
Dual-licensing, Selling
professional services: The financial
return of costs on open-source software can also
come from selling services, such as training, technical support, or consulting, rather than the software itself.
Partnership with funding organizations: Other financial situations include
partnerships with other companies. Governments, universities, companies, and non-governmental
organizations may develop internally or hire a contractor for custom in-house
modifications, then release that code under an open-source license. Some
organizations support the development of open-source software by
grants or stipends, like Google's Summer of Code initiative founded in 2005.
Open sources licenses fulfill 10
criteria: Free redistribution, Access to the source code, Right to change the source code and develop derived works,
Respect of the integrity of the author’s source code., Forbidding discrimination against persons and groups, Forbidding
discrimination against fields of endeavor, Universality
of the rights attached to the program, Protection of the program, and not of the product, Lack
of contamination of other products containing a protected source code , The license cannot discriminate
against any technology or style of interface.
Legal & Other Risk Associated: Potential liability for intellectual property infringement. Open Source
create opportunities for contributors therefore, it introduce infringing code
and makes it almost impossible to audit the entire code base, Typical license form doesn't include
any intellectual property representation, warranties or indemnities in favor of
the licensee.
Potential causes of concern: Features, functions,
security, ease of use, Loss of
copyright control, Loss of trade
secrets, Effect of fee based models
References:
Open source
software is software that users have the ability to run, distribute, study and
modify for any purpose. Open source is a collaborative software development
method that harnesses the power of peer review and transparency of process to
develop code that is freely 
