Demystifying Open Source
Open Source breeds innovation and has soared up the strategic agenda of most IT organizations. Still, myths are hanging on with their trail of fallacies, influencing decisions for the better … or the worse. Let’s explore a few of them.
Myth #1: Open Source is Open Bar for Software
Countless of Open Source projects are available for download on the market place. The invitation is tempting to drink for free from this open bar. But because it is free does not necessarily mean that … it is free! Let me explain.
When building a solution to be deployed in a production environment, how do you manage incidents related to your embedded Open Source technology? Who bears the risk? And later, have you thought about evolutions of this technology? Obsolescence?
Well, it is probably worth investigating who are the great minds making Open Source projects. They can certainly assist you with implementing them successfully.
Myth #2: Open Source projects are developed by Oompas Loompas
Open Source projects are legions, and free (under licenses, described at https://opensource.org/licenses). So where do the relentless, capable resources building them come from? Could they be Oompas Loompas borrowed from Charlie’s Chocolate Factory? Are they paid in cocoa nuts as well?
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation provides answers for one of the most popular Open Source project — Kubernetes (see https://k8s.devstats.cncf.io/):
· The top contributor is Google — which is not a surprise given it started the project — followed by many other cloud and software “work-for-profit” vendors.
· Independents (rank 5), who might be more animated by love and compassion than by the outlook of a profitable income, seem to represent a decent minority with around 4% of the total contributions over the past year.
· A few organizations which are not traditional Software or Cloud vendors, such as Kohl Corporation (rank 24), Daimler TSS (rank 29), BNPP (rank 121) and Société Générale (rank 1915) for instance, have contributed as well over the past year.
But what motivates those companies to invest so much in Open Source projects?
Myth #3: Open Source is for glory, not for money
Open Source is a communitarian model where anyone’s contribution benefits to everyone. It decouples the forces required to innovate and deliver outstanding solutions to the world. Mostly IT companies contribute to this model, with the intent of producing value and generating profit (the bare minimum they need to survive).
To materialize a return on their investments, they need to translate these contributions into products and services — through either licensed software, subscriptions, cloud services and so on.
There comes the difference between ‘upstream’ projects (from the Open Source community) and ‘downstream’ products (made from upstream and sold by IT Companies).
Such downstream products not only pay a great share for the Open Source contributions, but also provide their consumers (Companies consuming IT) with the support and evolution they need to consider Open Source in their production environments.
Myth #4: Contributing to Open Source is optional
You may ask — but is there a way where you don’t need to buy products or services and still get the benefits from Open Source?
There is, and the answer is … You!
It is generally possible to fork from an Open Source project and develop whatever fix or change you need. But you must do it yourself.
By investing directly in an Open Source project, you make it no longer free. And given you’ve invested, you might consider keeping your fixes and changes for yourself only, no? Think twice…
As long as your changes are not merged within the upstream project (materializing your contribution), you have to maintain those changes, migrate them into future releases, refactor them etc… Before you realize it, your development capacity is mostly absorbed by these maintenance, low-value activities. And your teams are no longer focusing on innovation.
In this FinTech article (https://www.fintechmagazine.com/banking/why-banks-should-participate-upstream-communities), Tim Holey develops further on this topic, and shares a sound reasoning why companies (Banks in particular) should contribute to upstream projects.
The bottom line is: contribution is key. Contributing to Open Source communities is beneficial for everyone, including you. And the more contributors the merrier.
Myth #5: Open Source sets you free from vendor lock-in
Wisely, you decided to invest and contribute to Open Source projects. Now, how do you materialize your return on investment? Have you considered the total cost of ownership for building, running, and maintaining your home-grown Open Source-based solution?
Is it worth it compared to a ‘buy’ approach from an external vendor?
Traditional make VS buy considerations do apply here as well. It is advised to compare the total cost of your investment to the expected return before making a decision.
But whatever your choice, lock-in applies — either to the Open Source project or the Vendor you selected.
Notice there are different levels of locking — for instance between a kubernetes distribution that — additionally — locks you to a Cloud catalog, and another one that runs on any infrastructure, opening up to most Cloud catalogs.
Conclusion
In the end, adopting an Open Source technology within your IT organization is pretty much like adopting a pet within your household. Sure, you can find one for free, but it does not preclude you from the obligation to feed it and care about its wellbeing.
And then either you invest your own time, money and energy to do so (contribute directly) or you pay someone else to do it for you (buy from a downstream vendor).
Should you decide not to make any such investment at all, then you leave no choice to the pet but to return to the wildlife and eventually, someday, to bite you back in return.
Vincent Baruchello — Client Technical Advisor, IBM
