Open Source Software
The open source market is dynamic and rapidly expanding. The number of registered Linux users has grown exponentially from 1 in 1991 (Linus Torvalds), to more than 14 million in 2004. In the last decade, open source software has gained market share in numerous markets, including:
- The most popular web server is open source. Apache is currently the #1 web server with over twice the market share of its next-ranked competitor;
- GNU/Linux is the #1 server operating system on the public Internet, when counting by domain name, and ranked #2, when counting by physical machine;
- GNU/Linux and Windows systems are the leaders, and essentially even in terms of developer use, for future embedded projects;
- OpenSSH is the Internet’s #1 implementation of the SSH security protocol; and
- A 2002 European open source survey found that 49% of CIOs in financial services, retail, and the public sector expect to be using open source software in the near future.
Open source software presents enormous advantages to potential customers:
- Software licensing costs are dramatically lower (i.e. $0)
- Development time can be rapidly accelerated by taking advantage of significant, leading edge research that is freely-available under license
- Software integration has the potential of running much more smoothly, if the open source software is designed and coded to commonly accepted standards (providing such standards exist, of course); and
- For technical areas of great research interest (such as grid computing and parallel processing), NOAA, and other customers, can leverage significant government and commercially funded research from the most advanced computing centers in the world to support their own efforts, a particularly innovative way to meet and overcome budget challenges.
However, "open source" typically does not solve all of a customer’s needs, as:
- Documentation is often rudimentary at best, and sometimes completely lacking;
- Products do not always work as advertised, and technical support may be very limited or even non-existant; and
- Development priorities of the customer often are not same as the open source software community, meaning that the functionality delivered as part of the open source package may be very narrow in nature, where the customer’s needs may be much broader, or located in a different area entirely.
The well-known limitations of open source software, however, provide a market niche for FTI. FTI continues to combine open source resources with its proprietary know-how and products to deliver high-quality technological solutions to both governmental and commercial customers. FTI’s knowledge, experience, best practices and intellectual property management of open and proprietary software products have been key to our customers’ implementation success.
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"The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong one. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it."
- Linus Torvalds
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