Why Should You Use Open Source?

By Rich Wellner

The open source justification is no longer the new path that few organizations have walked. I remember in the mid-90's when I switched from Solaris x86 to BSD and then to linux trying to explain what I was doing to co-workers. At that point I wasn't even trying to justify a decision to migrate some production machines, I was just exploring alternatives on my workstations. Still, I got far more confusion and skepticism then nods of understanding.

Today the world is different. People use open source for a wide variety of things. Most folks understand the landscape and regularly use total cost of ownership and risk mitigation as important parts of their final decision. What's still missing, in some cases, is the ability to take advantage of a unique opportunity that open source give you at an infrastructure layer.

Grid software is fundamentally concerned with managing very complex business needs in a manner that allows humans to understand what is going on with their systems. As such one of the most important aspects is the ability to integrate that infrastructure with applications in a manner that allows developers and system integrators to present simpler interfaces to their users.

With proprietary systems there are often APIs that allow this to be done. However, in no instance that I've seen are these APIs on the 'critical path' for the company making the software. They are always offered essentially as a patch that some powerful customer needed and now is slowly leaking out to the rest of the customer base. These systems also tend to be highly unstable and each version carries changes in the API. These changes are frequently radical and nearly always undocumented until a customer comes across something that has stopped working and raises a stink with the vendor.

Open source software tends to work differently, especially at an infrastructure layer. The components are built by folks who are 'eating their own home cooking' and understand the implications of a change in interface. As such, they tend to be infrequent and, when they do occur, highly justifiable. The reduction in quantity of changes is helpful, but because there is no vendor forcing an upgrade, the fact that you can adopt a new version when the timing is right for your organization is also a big plus.

The world has changed. And it's changed for the better for data center managers globally.