Open source has prevailed. By all means, there are still pockets of resistance here and there (who said ODF and OOXML?), but the use of open source software in particular in the private sector is far beyond “the tipping point”.

Per Palmkvist Knudsen, AKA the “IT-boss”, who is an active and well visited blogger at JP/Politiken, asks in his latest blog entry if open source is the road ahead. Luckily Per is so perceptive that his overall conclusion is that open source is here to stay. However, Per raises a number of different issues concerning open source as a sustainable business model both for the individual company as well as for Denmark as an IT-nation, which prompts me also to give my opinion. I do it primarily because of my own very personal preference for open source and other open licence forms. However, I also comment as a relatively newly elected chairman of the Danish Open Source Business Association.

Recently I participated in Free Software Foundation Europe’s annual conference for open source lawyers in Amsterdam. Here the conclusion about penetration of open source in business life was the same as can be heard in reports from Gardner, Forrester, Accenture and other established consultancy firms. Open source has become mainstream. It is no longer whether or not large companies should explain why they use open source from a business point of view, but today why the same companies do not have an open source strategy.

There are a good many reasons why use of open source in private and public companies makes really good sense. Per mentions some, which I would like to comment on one by one.

Earlier, one significant argument for use of open source software was that this was “free”, as it does not include payment of a licence fee to copy and use software licensed under open source licences. The argument about the lack of a licence payment has however almost always been missed, as use of open source software in no way is “free” in the sense that money and resources will not be spent in connection with open source solutions.  The point is however that the money which a company invests in an open source solution is not spent to pay software licences where you often do not know in advance whether the solution actually works for your company, and where you often are forced to buy a whole package where maybe only twenty per cent of the functionalities are necessary. On the contrary, your own money and resources will be spent to make the adjustments, configurations and developments of the open source software with the effect that it works exactly the way needed in your company.

However when Per points to the licence terms as a good argument to choose open source solutions, he nevertheless touches on something which is quite true. Firstly, it is through the open source licence terms, which decisively and radically give the user more rights than set up limitations, that the great advantage for users of open source software exists.

Secondly – and as part of the above mentioned – open source licence terms are the only right solution if you want a really scalable licence solution in connection with contemporary use of IT. If you use open source software in a solution where the need for roll-out of several servers, setting up of more desktops etc., mean that the software will be copied not only a couple of times more, but in addition often a decisively large number more, then the open source licence terms are useful. Quite simply you pay for each new user, CPU taken into consideration, or other complicated licence fee payment terms. In this respect, resizing of open source software is without doubt “free”.

As Per touches on, licence compliance is one of the very big challenges in connection with the “outdated” licence model which a large part of the IT-industry still uses. And here a completely structured conflict has arisen often within the large and established IT-giants. On the one hand, a part of the organisation wants to go the cloud-way or supply services on top of e.g. open source solutions. On the other hand, you will find the old, traditional sales organisation with a salesman who in a completely traditional manner has quarterly sales targets to comply with for a number of licences to be disposed of to the customers. Sellers of traditional licences are put under great pressure when a large part of the IT-development, and thereby the IT-giants’ estimated profits, moves towards cloud-solutions and other services.

In my opinion and after what I have heard in the market, then it means much more attention these days from the traditional side by the IT-giants towards implementing licence compliance by the customers. And as the current licence terms – as Per correctly points out – often are completely and totally opaque, it will almost as sure as fate mean that the customers turn out to be significantly under-licensed. This is both good and bad. Of course it is bad for the customers who are met with a requirement for increased purchase of licences. However, on the other hand it is good for the open source people who gain even better arguments in favour of the use of open source solutions.

For many IT-departments both in the private and public sectors, one of the few remaining arguments for using traditional licence fee based IT-models have been that at least here was a predictability in relation to costs. A solution cost X number of kronor, as one could predict (they thought) how many users were going to use the solution, and how much the licence cost per user would be. I admit that this overview has been more difficult to get in connection with open source solutions as the migration costs, maintenance costs, development costs, and education of users etc. have been more difficult to get an overview of. Luckily, this has become much easier today.

When an IT-department in a municipality or a listed company then ascertains that they are facing a considerable claim due to under-licensing, the whole argument about predictability in connection with the traditional licence fee model disappears. In my opinion this means that both public and private companies choose to look even more towards open source software solutions. It is undisputed that these solutions in quality are up to and often are better than traditional closed source solutions. Then when also the predictability in connection with resizing when using copies of software also turns out to be superior to the traditional licence model, some of the last arguments for keeping away from open source solutions vanish.

Per also mentions that an open source strategy could be of great advantage for Danish society as an IT-nation. Here I can only agree. For a long time I have thought it very odd that the Kingdom of Denmark and especially small and medium-sized Danish owned companies sent such a large part of the costs in connection with use of IT out of the country in the form of licence fees to often large, foreign IT-giants. Of course I have nothing against open trade across the borders and in no way am an advocate for trade barriers. Seen from a social point of view, however, it makes much better sense that payment of IT-services goes to salaries of competitive and qualified IT-people in Denmark than sending it to companies which often even do not pay tax in Denmark. Of course, it should be emphasised that open source development in no way will be limited to being done by coders in Denmark.

Open source is characterised by being based on open competition, and therefore open source development in connection with specific projects might as well be done in India or other places, if the end-result makes sense to the Danish customer. That’s why one of the great strengths about open source is also that the barriers for competing are reduced considerably.

Therefore it will to a great extent make sense in Danish society that the Government presents an ambitious open source strategy; namely that practically all development and new initiatives within IT in the public sector should be based on open source software. This should however not have priority over closed source software, as open source software solutions are fully capable of standing on their own feet and of being competitive without Government subsidy schemes. But then we quickly move into a longer discussion about open standards, ODF as opposed to OOXML, a discussion which I am not going into here.

In the end, Per mentions in his blog entry two issues which I would also like to comment on briefly. One concerns Nokia and the Symbian platform. The other the truly self-contradictory use of Apple products.

The story of Symbian’s journey from a standard which was not based on open source code to an open source project, and now into a most likely not open source based future in Microsoft-Nokia cooperation, is interesting. In my opinion the story about Symbian is interesting, but not because it neither proves nor disproves the advantages of placing an operative system to mobile systems under an open source platform. The story clearly shows that it never makes sense just to release code under open source licences, unless you have a specific business model in this connection. A part of the business model – I assume – which Nokia based its decision on when deciding to release Symbian under a relatively uncomplicated open source licence (Eclipse Public License) was that they wanted a large community of developers who would develop the Symbian platform itself, but to a great extent also develop different services and applications (apps) on top.

I do not think that I insult anyone by saying that in the open source community there was consensus that it was a good idea to release Symbian under an open source licence, but the actual execution of the Nokia open source project has been wretched. Especially at one point, the project has been a failure. Nokia have at no time in its communication of its other actions been able to build a fully trusted community around the Symbian code. If there isn’t credibility and openness in connection with an open source project, there won’t be anyone who bothers to work with this and invest time and money in it. I guess this is the sad truth about Nokia’s Symbian project.

With regard to my own self-contradiction in advocating for open source solutions and the use of Apple products, I surrender. My only excuse is that to me, as a semi-technical user, Apple’s products simply “work”. Despite political motives, I find it difficult to justify that I ought to change from my iMac or PowerBook to for instance a multi-based solution. But of course I keep evaluating this, as I can see the problem.

But then I find some comfort in Apple’s operative system (Mac OSX), which is after all based on a highly well-developed and well-functioning operative system released under an open source licence. So there is a tiny bit of open source software in my use of Apple products.

Finally I agree with Per that one of the major challenges ahead isn’t Microsoft’s monopoly any longer, as it gradually has been reduced to a relatively few areas although these are extremely important, especially in the Danish public sector. Prospectively, there is a bigger problem, in order to ensure a free market and plenty of innovation within the whole IT-business, that legislators and regulators find good ways to handle the new forms of monopoly which will arise when not just Apple might control everything from content to end-user devices, but in particular when a company like Google to a great extent gains monopoly on data and content.