Enterprise Initiatives

In part 1 I debunked the "OSS is bad for the economy myth". In part2 I showed six different models for OSS support. In this third and final post on debunking OSS myths, I will address these two statements:

• OSS products are second rate ("created in the garage" mentality)
• OSS can't be good because it is free

There are many OSS products that are highly reliable and run the systems of very successful companies and web sites that have millions of users. Just look at some the names of highest traffic web sites ranked by Alexa that use the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, or Perl) stack (the link next to the website shows their underlying architecture):

1. Yahoo (LAMP)
   
2. Google (LAMP)
   
3. Youtube (LAMP)
   
4. Windows Live (Win)
   
5. MSN (Win)
   
6. MySpace (Win)
   
7. Wikipedia (LAMP)
   
8. Facebook (LAMP)
   
9. Blogger.com (LAMP)
   
10. Yahoo JP (LAMP)

Go to this link to look up the architecture of your favorite sites.

Other major companies using LAMP are Amazon, Disney, Boeing to name a few. Read this article called How Linux saved Amazon millions to see the real value in open source software. Twitter is another site that is growing like crazy. Look at the OSS that it uses:
But major websites aren't the only ones leveraging OSS. Most of the major technology companies have an open source strategy now. How about this list (click on the links to see each company's Open Source page):

• IBM
• Sun
• BEA
• Oracle
• HP

All of these companies are using OSS along side their own products to drive costs down. Most non-Microsoft development these days leverage a ton of open source tools. Look at the tools in the J2EE stack:

• JBoss
• Tomcat
• Struts
• Hibernate
• Spring
• PHP
• Perl
• Python and more

So much for the comments "Free means crap" or the ignorant "garbage.com" comments. These tools are the real deal. Are there crappy OSS products? Sure, but no different then the crappy proprietary products. Even Microsoft is starting to pay attention to Open Source. Although they are doing because OSS is a threat while the other companies are leveraging it as a competitive advantage.

So this concludes my 3-part series on debunking OSS myths. Anytime you hear the myths or FUD be spewed by those who refuse to acknowledge reality or just have not done their homework, please forward them these articles so they can learn what most of the rest of the world already know.