Open software solutions - philosophical foundations, development and application in business

Abstract

The last century is definitely the era of rampant capitalism. The capitalistic concept took the lead in the battle of economic systems and influences nowadays – directly or indirectly – the whole globe. In the world of aggressive Western values and increasing profit as the ultimate basis for existence, a fully unexpected phenomenon emerged. The trend called open-source software is one of the most important movements in today’s global technology. It has changed the face of software, creating an alternative powered by community not motivated by money, but the need of contribution, innovation spreading and, what may seem unusual, fun. At the same time, the business environment always seeking decrease of costs and increase of efficiency became interested in the open software. The solution apparently created for the ones interested in computer technology, developed into an everyday tool used and praised by many. What once used to be a vision of a narrow group of computer geeks, took on a new personality and turned into a methodology that goes far beyond IT. This bachelor thesis is to explain the philosophy behind the open-source software, its development and application in business. The main question to be answered is whether open-source software is mature enough to be implemented in enterprises. The work is divided into two parts – theoretical and empirical. The theoretical part provides overall understanding of the open-source software concept and its aspects. The empirical part refers to the observation of practical applications of open-source software in world-wide known companies. The first chapter aims at introducing the overall concept of open-source initiatives and the definition of open-source software. The history of the open-source software movement and the importance of the contributing community follow. The chapter finishes with making the reader familiar with the ways of making profit from open-source products and services. The second chapter concentrates on the economical, technical and legal aspects of open-source software in the business context, as well as describes the main drawbacks of open solutions. The third chapter is dedicated to the research into 10 companies: Lapeyre, LVM, Renault, Skanska, Statoil, Lycos Europe, neckermann.de, Sony, Suzuki and Yahoo! Finance, that have chosen open-source software as the answer to their IT needs. Two open solutions will be analyzed on the example of the before mentioned companies – Red Hat Enterprise Linux and MySQL database. The study will aim at presenting the reasons for implementing open-source software in companies, in addition to proving that open-source software is an alternative to proprietary solutions. The resources used to complete the work include academic books, magazine and newspaper articles, online articles, corporate websites, materials published by the analyzed companies and software vendors. The thesis is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Poland License.