Open-source software opportunities and challenges.

Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is an imposing business reality but only an emerging discipline of business research. Critical questions have been so far only tangentially investigated and were mostly left to IT columnists and consultants to deal with, generally in a partisan fashion. Such important issues include the viability of FLOSS business models, the impact of FLOSS on the software industry structure and competitiveness, the FLOSS-based national IT strategies, the role of governments and other lobbying groups in promoting or combating FLOSS, and finally the vital matters of TCO, security, and performance among others. This paper tries to lay the foundation in analyzing the FLOSS phenomenon by pointing to the real opportunities that lie ahead and the critical challenges that have to be addressed before FLOSS can claim its rightful stake in the software industry. OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE: A DEFINING FRAMEWORK FLOSS has been described as both a philosophy and a process for software development and distribution (Morgan, 2002). As a philosophy it describes a set of beliefs on how software (i.e. knowledge) ought to be developed and transferred. This philosophical discourse is generally underlined by a moral stand and is opposed to the dominant discourse of commercial software vendors who seek to make profits from the development and distribution of software. Accordingly software needs to be designed to be free itself and to enable the free sharing of all types of information (Maguire, 2003c). As a process, open source proponents advocate the superiority of a software development model that harnesses the collective intelligence of a community of users scattered all over the word (i.e. innovation communities) in opposition to the proprietary development model which relies on the efforts of a research and development team (Hippel, 2001). Abundant research dealt with the concept of “innovation communities”, a term that has been coined to describe the programming efforts deployed in open-source projects (Meyer, 2003; Franke & Hippel, 2003; Von Krogh et al.; 2003; Hippel, 2001) . An appropriate definition of open source software is the following: Open source software is software for which an executable version is made available along with the source code and which, can be modified by those who acquire it either freely or commercially. This definition is comprehensive enough and covers most licenses, commonly termed as open-source. It also covers both software that is made available for free and software that is commercially sold. Finally it covers software that is developed by a community of users outside of organizational boundaries (i.e. innovation communities), as is typical of open source projects as well as software that is developed by software manufacturers. IS OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FREE? Richard Stallman, the initiator of the FLOSS movement, and founder of the Open Source Foundation developed his argument for the free flow of software and equated the open source movement to other progressive movements that sought to instill free speech and other higher moral values in society (Evers, 2000). Hence free has always meant freedom rather than price zero. More specifically, free relates to the users freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change, and improve the software (Cervone, 2003). An extreme view goes as far as decrying any efforts to sell any programming code, or claiming any intellectual property over programming code. Software hence should not exist as an industry (Cervone, 2003). However by far and large, it is admitted as a common practice within the open source community, and under a variety of licenses that FLOSS can be commercially sold and licensed as in proprietary commercial licensing, albeit with major differences that will be explained later. Indeed while open-source licenses are free, many software vendors have developed successful businesses selling FLOSS. RedHat and SuSE are two prominent Linux vendors that sell software both under the GPL and proprietary licenses. SUN has developed an office suite that is perceived by many as a potential threat to Microsoft Office suite. MySQL, an open source database, offers both a free-source license and a traditional commercial license (Darrow, 2003). In order to better understand what seems to be a contradiction on the surface, it is mandatory that copyright and licensing schemes for FLOSS be explained. WHO OWNS THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS OF OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE? There are many different types of open-source software licenses in use, nearly as many as fifty (see: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ ). Nonetheless and as a group FLOSS licenses could be clearly distinguished from conventional proprietary licenses. The latter are generally designed to take away the user freedom to share and change the software, which is the object of the license. By contrast, open-source licenses explicitly guarantee the freedom to share and change software without any permission from its original owner (Evers, 2000). The GPL (General Public License) is the most prominent license because the most visible open-source product, Linux, is distributed under its terms (Evers, 2000). Not only does the GPL guarantee the freedom to share and change software but also requires than anything linked with the concerned software be distributed as free software as well. This is known as the ‘virus’ effect (Evers, 2000). A consequence of this is that any software that is developed based on the Linux Kernel for example has to be shared back with the open-source community, hence released under a GPL itself. This has had a very positive consequence on the development of Linux as a major player in the server market and even as a serious contender to dethrone Windows from its desktop hegemony. Conversely, other operating systems that are distributed under open source licenses that do not require re-channeling changes, such as the BSD license (Berkeley Software Distribution), have led to dispersed programming efforts and even an appropriation of open-source code by proprietary vendors. Apple’s latest version of its proprietary operating 701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Suite 200, Hershey PA 17033-1240, USA Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING This conference paper appears in the book, Innovations Through Information Technology, edited by Mehdi Khosrow-Pour. Copyright © 2004, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 78