Open source software – answering the big questions

Anais Urlichs at Aqua Security examines the myths around open source software and explains its role in today’s technology strategies

 

In most digital organisations, technology modernisation goes together with investment in cloud-native technologies. While this trend has been emerging for some time, the pandemic significantly accelerated both the planning and implementation of strategies.

 

Cloud-native applications, their infrastructure, and related platforms, used to manage workloads, are largely dependent on open source projects. Today, most enterprise solutions utilise open source software (OSS) components as their building blocks. From security and reliability to cost reduction and flexibility, the benefits are widely appreciated.

 

In understanding the role of open source in today’s tech strategies, it’s important to examine common misconceptions and myths that have developed around it, some of which might prevent organisations from taking full advantage.

 

The following is a list of some of those questions that may act as barriers to adoption.

 

Is OSS riskier than proprietary software?

From the roadmap and feature implementation to product validation, OSS projects are structured differently from proprietary software. There are no profits determining the development of open source projects. This gives maintainers a lot of leverage in deciding the direction of their project. If an enterprise solution wants to influence the development of an open source project, one of the few things they can do is hire engineers to work on those projects.

 

Mostly, open source projects are influenced by recent developments in their respective domain, such as emerging technologies and best practices. This makes the future of an open source project fairly predictable and, due to its open source nature, transparent to its users.

 

When deciding upon which open source project to use, it is important to compare the maturity of each project. More mature projects will have more maintainers and contributing, better tested features, and more integrations with other projects in the area.

 

Isn’t it more challenging and time-consuming to work with open source?

At its core, OSS is highly collaborative, with most tools and applications written to integrate with other open source solutions. Similar to proprietary software tools, there can be challenges in effectively managing this collaboration, but they shouldn’t be seen as any harder than in other circumstances.

 

Mature open source projects tend to have the structure and processes in place to invite collaboration and thought leadership, which makes contributing and integrating with those projects easier from an enterprise perspective.

 

Furthermore, open source communities offer anything from practical help in identifying bugs and vulnerabilities, to people prepared to contribute coding expertise. In many ways, this ecosystem helps accelerate innovation and can be relied on for highly effective support and assistance.

 

Is open source software mature enough?

A common misconception relating to OSS is that it’s a relative newcomer to the software scene. In fact, the concept of publicly available and usable code first arrived nearly 25 years ago when the trademark process began.

 

Fast forward a quarter of a century and many of the biggest and well-supported OSS communities contribute towards mature solutions that are extensively tested in experimental and real-world use cases. It also stands to reason that the more that open source is used commercially, the more mature it becomes.

 

For instance, the transparent nature of open source solutions result in more regular updates, security patches, and improvements compared to those seen with proprietary software.

 

Is open source software just for enterprise applications?

Open source is strongly associated with some of today’s largest and most successful technology innovators – Google and Facebook among them. But increasingly, the technology is building a presence beyond the private sector, with many government-backed open source initiatives under development or already rolled out.

 

For example, OpenUK is building programs to encourage conversations in politics and across borders around open technology.

 

In fact, OSS can add significant value-add across government departments and agencies, not least because its open nature means it can be shared and reused as required. This helps boost collaboration, while also helping to maximise tightening public sector budgets. Since open source is free from the need for significant financial investment, open source represents a financially responsible solution.

 

In addition, giving developers the opportunity to work with innovative open source software and tools is an increasingly appealing career prospect – a factor which can help maximise recruitment efforts at a time when there is a serious talent shortage across the entire technology landscape.

 

In the final analysis, these crucial technology choices are increasingly nuanced and shouldn’t be narrowly focused on whether proprietary software is better than OSS or vice versa. In reality, both are key, but in the case of OSS, developing and building cloud-native technologies simply isn’t practical without OSS in the conversation.

 

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Anais Urlichs, Open Source Developer Advocate at Aqua Security

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com