The Goose that laid the Golden Egg

I was almost tempted to title this post “Why Open Source is here for the long haul”, instead I decided to stick with a more colourful term. Just because a goose has never been known to lay a golden egg doesn’t necessarily mean that one never will!!

Open Source is not only here to stay but its the way of the future and I would even go so far as to suggest that its already well and truly embedded within mainstream.

To give you an example – most of the web pages that you view in your browser when surfing the net are served by an Open Source program called Apache. The odds are also high that somewhere in between you and the web server you are accessing sits caching hardware running proxy software such as Squid.

If you take a closer look at trends within the IT Industry over the past 30 years you will see a clear shift in where and how people are spending the dollars to implement Computer Technology within their organisations. Hardware, Software and People are the main consumers of IT budgets and back in the days when men were men and computers were made of steal, hardware was by far the most costly out of these three components.

This all started to change around the time the first IBM PC appeared on the market in the early 80’s and Microsoft eventually emerged as a monopoly within the industry. During this period hardware costs started to come down and software and associated licensing costs began to climb.

Long before Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) was throned the richest man in the world the Open Source Community was born. I’m not sure what the drivers were for these software developers and hackers back in the early days but somewhere along the way the concept of free and open software was born. Partially to challenge the hegemony of the Proprietaries such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM but mainly to address the quality issues confronting the behemoths within the industry. (Eg: how long have we put up with the blue screen of death for!)

It’s quite simple really, companies such as Microsoft are by definition motivated by profit as they are ultimately accountable to the shareholders – in contrast – Open Source Software developments spontaneously emerge in response to a gap or a need and are based on a model of cooperation as opposed to an entrenched culture of the multi-nationals which is based on competition. Have you ever wandered what systems Microsoft itself employs to run its financial applications? Well, sorry to disappoint you folks but it ain’t Microsoft and it ain’t Windows!!

Up until a few years ago Open Source projects were restricted to the hackers garage or office and business paid little to no attention to the efforts of these nerdy types. That all changed around six years ago when Novell purchased Suse and set itself the target of replacing Microsoft Windows with Suse on over 100,000 of its desktops around the world.

The bottom line is that hardware is already as cheap as it’s ever going to get and corporates are desperately seeking a reprieve from the prohibitive costs of Proprietary solutions. The cost of software will not come down – what is already happening and what will continue to happen is that more and more businesses will take a closer look at and slowly turn to Open Source options in attempt to reduce costs.

The shift in IT&C cost breakup will therefore continue along it’s current course as we begin to see more and more die-hards embracing the new software paradigm. And as the trend continues to meander over the next five to ten years we will eventually see the arse drop out of the Software for Profit market. Once this current cycle completes we should by all calculations see both Software and Hardware given away for next to nix and IT budgets mainly consumed by staffing and support costs.

Apart from the odd attempt at installing one of the many flavours of Linux before coming to Papua New Guinea, when I started work at Goroka General Hospital early 2007 I had little previous knowledge or experience with Open Source. Back in the pre PNG days, I would fiddle with Bootmagic and lets say Redhat in an attempt to get a dual boot system happening, in the end I would inevitably give up due to some obscure issue with a video driver or another.

Well, things have certainly come a long way and there are many brands of Linux OS out there that will install first go no matter what hardware you are running – server, desktop or laptop. Bingo! No more blue screens of death! No more issues with obnoxious viruses and the cost of purchasing and licensing your software… zilch!! Heck… you’ll even be able to open documents created in MS Office 2007!!

And ladies and gentlemen… that’s the story about how the goose did lay the golden egg!

Let me make a prediction… (if I may) there will come a time, and long before you and me end up totally senile and dicrepit when softwares such as Microsoft Windows will end up relegated to the confines of Palative Hostels and old peoples homes – purely for the benefit of those old folks who in their younger years refused to let go and embrace a more effective and cheaper way of doing things.