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<title>Slide Comments</title>
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<h3>Slide Comments</h3>
<hr/>
<blockquote>
This document contains notes to go along with the presentation. It
will undergo changes as needed. These are notes and may not make
sense to everyone. As changes are made hopefully the presentation
will start to make more sense.
<a name="7"/><h4>Why businesses should run OSS</h4>
<a name="7-bind"/>1: BIND is the software behind 90% of the DNS's on
the internet <br/><br/>
<a name="7-apache"/>2: Apache is the most commonly deployed webserver
on the planet, it also serves more pages per installation then
competing proprietary webservers.<br/><br/>
<a name="7-tcp-ip"/>3: A recent study of proprietary and open source
TCP/IP stacks revealed that the OSS stacks were faster and more
stable.<br/><br/>
<a name="7-linux-kernel"/>4: Even before the linux kernel hit version
1.0 (it is now version 2.5.??) people had linux installations which
had uptimes of over 1 year. Some of these installations were
running hard hit webservers.<br/><br/>
<a name="7-mozilla"/>5: The Mozilla web browser is strong competitor
to Internet Explorer. It has unique features like tabbed browsing
and the ability to deactivate various annoying Javascript features
like pop-up windows.
<a name="8"/><h4>More Reasons Businesses Should Run OSS</h4>
<ul>
<li>Patches, Upgrades, and Troubleshooting all can cost money.
They also cost time as you must sometimes wait for the
problems to be resolved, and if your issues aren't high
priority you have to wait.</li>
<li>No Customization: If the software doesn't do exactly what you
want you have no recourse but to wait for it to be changed.
With OSS you can have local talent, hired talent, or a group
of engineers interested in solving your problem work to add
the features you need. This also applies to patches and
bugs.</li>
<li>Customer Service: Although your software often comes with a
short period of free customer service, after a month or two
you have to pay for that service. The Linux community won an
award for customer service in 200? for how the community
helped users solve technical issues. Not only is the service
award winning, it is free.</li>
<li>Vendor Lock In: So you've adopted MS Word. Your company now
has 8 million Word files floating around. If you decide that
you want to switch Word Processors it becomes difficult as
Word uses proprietary file formats. OSS usually stores
information using open standards so you can easily switch
between software packages. Even if it doesn't the code to
read and write these files is open so people can (and do)
write code to transfer between varying formats.</li>
<li>Compatibility: Similar to vendor lock-in, but proprietary
software written by different companies often doesn't work
very well together. This is because they don't write to open
standards and don't want interoperability. With OSS if you
like OpenOffice and I like AbiWord we can still work on the
same documents without pain.</li>
<li>Scalability: After MS acquired Hotmail they tried to transfer
the web-based email from Unix to Windows. They tried for
years. Their software could not handle the amount of traffic
and storage that Hotmail had been using for years. It wasn't
until Windows 2000 that they finally made the switch. Of
course even as their software has improved so has the *nix
platforms.</li>
<li>Bugs: One of the cornerstones of the Open Source Movement is
that "Many Eyes make bugs shallow". This means that when you
have many people reporting bugs, submitting fixes, and
reading code bugs are found quickly. Proprietary software is
sometimes released with fatal bugs as in <a href="">this story</a></li>
</ul>
<a name="9"/><h4>OSS on the Server</h4>
<ul>
<li>Designed by technical people for technical people/tasks:
Users don't care about what webserver they are hitting
.. they just want the pages. If Apache is designed by a
sysadmin for a sysadmin, then it is probably the better
choice.</li>
<li>Innovative: Lots of new features created by people who have
heavily used a software product are added. SQUID, Apache,
etc. took the lead cause they had lots of useful features
not found elsewhere</li>
<li>Ease of administration: Close integration with OSS tools
allows people with a high amount of knowledge to quickly
work on software. Proprietary products often hide lots of
features from the user and try to administrate via Wizards
and GUIs which are targeted towards novices and often prove
a hindrance for experts</li>
<li>Bug Fixes/Reporting/Patching: Can fix the bugs yourself, or
find others who know how to fix bugs. Don't have to rely on
a vendor to do the work and decide to release the code, plus
they may not prioritize you bug</li>
</ul>
<a name="10"/><h4>OSS on the Desktop</h4>
<b>Benefits</b>
<ul>
<li>Product feature bloat: Don't use a large % of Word's
capabilities so don't need a achieving penetration,
especially in business product which does 100% of what word
does .. just 80%</li>
<li>Not locked onto a platform: Don't like to retrain for
software so you want software to run on as many platforms as
possible</li>
<li>Standards Compliant: OSS tends to write to implement
standards which cannot be said for many proprietary
products. If you write to standards then you will find that
software, files, hardware etc. "just work". VINES protocol
was an attempt to create a proprietary network protocol. It
eventually failed.</li>
<li>Cross Functional: An offshoot of Standards Compliant, cross
functional means that if you like AbiWord and someone else
likes OpenOffice they can read each others files .. you are
not forced to do everything one way.</li>
<li>Customizable: While most individual users won't be
customizing their software to do anything, by participating
in a community they can more directly encourage people to
add features/fix bugs that they want</li>
<li>Security/Privacy: OSS is open from the start, and often not
as dependent on corporate entities. The openness helps to
guarantee secure design (no security through obscurity) and
people can report on spyware features, or other
publishing/storing of private data.</li>
<li>Customer Service: The linux community (meaning the
aggregation of news sites, message boards, and mailing lists
won a customer service award in the year 2001</li>
</ul>
<b>Problems</b>
<ul>
<li>Retraining: The cost of training people to switch from Win
2000 to Win XP achieving penetration, especially in
businessesXP is high achieving penetration, especially in
businesses.. what about Win 2000 to Linux</li>
<li>Not as User Friendly: Microsoft has more interaction with
novice users then the OSS community and they target those
users. This results in a lack of some functionality which
end users like, but aren't a high priority to the engineers.
As more novice users move to the platform a community will
develop to better meet their needs. </li>
<li>Too Much Software: OSS people like to "roll their own" so
there is a lot of competing software. This results in the
development being spread around. It also contributes to
innovation and healthy competition, but it saps brain power
too. Individuals have trouble picking between 2 Desktop
Environs, 50 Window Managers, 100 editors, and 150
cd-burning programs. This is why distributions are an
important business</li>
<li>Lack of MS Exchange type application: Most desktop users
want an office suite (OpenOffice), a web browser (Mozilla),
a chat program (Gaim), some games, a media player (XMMS and
MPlayer) and an email client/personal information manager
(Evolution). Businesses want them to share a common
backend (like Exchange). OSS does not offer this yet, but
with the funding of projects like Chandler this will
change.</li>
</ul>
<a name="11"><h4>Why OSS for Suppliers</h4>
<b>Development Benefits</b>
<ul>
<li>Supporting Software Investment can always equal zero:
Developing for the linux platform, or cross platform, means
that companies can use the OSS tools which are always
available for free. While software is pretty much free in
Armenia anyways, if you grow you may find that someone comes
to do a license evaluation</li>
<li>Decreased Cost of Hardware Investment: Hardware is cheap, but
just how cheap is it? OSS software runs well on older
hardware while the newest version of Windows required many
people to upgrade their 2 year old hardware</li>
<li>Free Developers: Developers are a major cost when writing
code. By building an online community you get free bug
testers, enhancements, new features. You can also hire
people from inside the community to work for your company
saving you training and ramp up time</li>
<li>Many Eyes Make Bugs Shallow: QA work annoys most developers,
and it's impossible to catch all your bugs (if the software
is complex). Therefore having lots of people using your
software means that bugs are found quickly and reported
efficiently stabilizing your product faster</li>
<li>Design and Security Review: As you have a wide base of people
you can get feedback on your Design and your security
features .. this means that you can catch flaws early when
they are easy to fix.</li>
</ul>
<b>Marketing Benefits</b>
<ul>
<li>Word of mouth: As interest in your project grows you will
find people recommending your org. to their companies
.. free marketing</li>
<li>International Attention on Open Source: Lots of international
attention for Open Source, ride the tide IBM, international
governments etc</li>
<li>Code is forever: If they have the source code then they are
protected against any business decisions you make. MS just
stopped supporting Win98, what if you won't/can't upgrade to
Win2k .. you are stuck with an unsupportable product. As
all good companies are "risk averse" they are interested in
having a product they can fix themselves (or which will be
fixed by other like minded individuals).</li>
<li>Security: Open Source code is recognized as being more
secure in basic design then it's proprietary counterparts.
It can't rely on <a href="afd">Security through
Obscurity</a></li>
</ul>
<b>Proprietary Problems</b>
<ul>
<li>Licenses are hard to write</li>
<li>Enforcement of licenses is almost impossible in most parts of
the world (including the US)</li>
<li>If you want to compete in the big markets as a proprietary
company there is a lot of competition: Until you reach a
critical mass of users, or spend a lot on marketing .. people
are going to use the more familiar name even if your product
is better. Open Source lets you stand out amongst the
crowd.</li>
</ul>
<a name="12"><h4>OSS in Armenia</h4>
<ul>
<li>Licenses don't work here: Software is free .. so charging for
it won't get you any money</li>
<li>Aid Community: If you want to start a project then you may
want to seek money from the AID community. They are very
interested in funding Open Source projects as it helps their
money count for every country not just the one they are
trying to help</li>
<li>Publicity: Participating in projects and starting projects can
make your name known. A programmer in Croatia wanted to
browse the web but found it difficult with his incosistent
connection. He wrote a little utility called wget to allow
him to copy web pages over inconsistent connections. People
all over the world use this utility now. He also helped work
on Xemacs and his work on this project netted him a free trip
to Japan (all expenses paid) to speak at a conference. This
body of work also helped him to land a high paying programming
job in Germany.</li>
<li>Experience: Having an education is great, having a body of
work is better. Show off your skills</li>
<li>Related Jobs: Companies are always looking for ways to get
work done cheaply. If you contribute to a worthy project and
they need someone to work on it they may pay for your
services</li>
<li>Diaspora: OSA and EIF are both backing this project and they
have connections with Armenians abroad who may be able to
attract business to you</li>
<li>Big Companies will ignore Armenian needs: Armenia is a small
market, an Armenian version of Windows is never going to come
out. If you adopt OSS people can start to work Armenianize
their software.</li>
</ul>
<table border="1" width="100%"><tr><td align="center"
cellpadding="10"> <a name="1"/><a name="2"/><a name="3"/><a
name="4"/><a name="5"/><a name="6"/><a name="6a"/><a name="13"/><a
name="14"/><a name="15"/><a name="16"/><a name="17"/><b>There are
currently no notes for this slide.</td></tr></table>
</blockquote>
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<td align="left" width="5%"><a
href="mailto:tristancohen@yahoo.com">tristancohen@yahoo.com</a></td>
<td align="center" width="90%">$Id: slide-comments.html,v 1.2 2003/05/05 07:45:59 tristan Exp $</td>
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