Interest in implementation of open source technologies in increasing day by day and I believe that nobody can deny this truth. There is no shortage of interest in how an open source technology can be used to help in minimizing the overall budget costs. However, that said, there still are a number of outdated myths that surround open source technologies. These Myths acts as leg pullers for developers who wish to pursue their carrier in this field. So, I just wish to reveal some general myths of the open source technologies. But before starting, have a look on an analysis done by a popular website:

The data mentioned above is not very scientific , but gives a general view of people’s understanding about open source technologies. Lets go further deeper and know what is reason behind these myths:

Myth 1: Open Source is Free.

No, open source is barter ware. The currency is contributions. Open source has a community which is a huge advantage because you have interested users. Commercial open source vendors can serve as a conduit for access to community by providing expertise in the technical aspects of the project(s) while remaining upstanding members of the open source community itself. These companies can help people access open source easier… at a reasonable cost.

Myth 2. Open source does not follow intellectual property rights:

This is a great misconception. Open Source software is subject to the same copyright laws as closed source software. But the only difference is open source software suppliers share their IP addresses with others. As a consequence, products are available in the market quickly. There is no possibility of monopoly and hence, prices cannot be controlled by a single organization. Moreover, there is competition amongst various software development companies to provide services at an affordable rate to the customers. Many reputed companies like Netscape, IBM and Apple have created licenses for intellectual property rights for the creators of software, while opening up a source code to encourage developers to use open source.

Myth 3. It’s all about Linux versus Windows

I know you are playing a smile on your lips after reading this myth, but that’s a true. This is a wrong face of Linux vs. Windows. Anybody can implement open source methodology in their businesses whether or not your company ever uses Linux. They say that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. One of the biggest problems everyone has in coming to grips with the open source phenomenon is that they insist on interpreting it in terms of the previous generation of computing, and so miss its real, pervasive effect. In my remarks today, I hope to outline some parts of that effect.

Myth 4. Open Source Technology is neither Reliable nor Supported.

I’ll go in some deep, hope you don’t mind. The one who says open source software is not reliable, then he/she should not use the Internet too. The reason behind it is – the infrastructure of Internet heavily oriented on Open Source technologies. The best example is DNS, which uses a program in the core named BIND, which was developed at UC Berkeley, but maintained by its principal developer as an independent free software project under the group called the Internet Software Consortium. And BIND is one of the most mission-critical programs in the world.

Sendmail is another good example. the mail transport server that serves approximately 75% of all internet sites (the chaos is that user don’t even know they are using it. Because email messages needs to be handled by at least two mail servers while transmitting message from one site to another, and there is a very high probability that almost every message relies on sendmail. Like BIND, sendmail was originally developed at UC Berkeley, and maintained over the years by a free software developer community headed by Eric Allman, who is the original developer.

And that’s not all. It’s also well known that the open source Apache is one among the most popular web server which hosts most world’s web sites, including many of the most heavily trafficked. The proof is Yahoo!, which is running on customized version of Apache web server. In an attempt to increase its scalability and performance, Yahoo! has recently outsourced parts of its network to caching service provider Akamai, who not incidentally is one of VA Linux Systems’ largest customers.

I hope when I’ll say that TCP/IP protocol stacks used in most commercial internet software, then nobody disagree. But very few of them are aware that they are based on the code originally written as part of the Berkeley networking package.

What’s more, the Internet Engineering Task Force, or IETF, the body that creates and governs the Internet standards, operates by a process that has a great deal in common with open source. Anyone can join its mailing lists and meetings and shape the direction of its standards–technical contribution, not political maneuvering by large companies-and ultimately guides what is in and what is out.

With the growing interest in open source technologies in the computer industry, large end users will soon have the best of both worlds, with the informal support mechanisms of the networked developer community with the big-company support of players like IBM, HP, Sun, and Silicon Graphics, not to mention aggressive startups like Red Hat.

Myth 5: Not suitable for mission-critical applications

Mission-critical apps don’t come any more crucial than those in banking, where transaction systems simply have to work securely. Experimenting with open source, with its attendant risks in terms of potential infringement, security and maintenance, might be regarded as bets candidate.
But walk into Banca Popolare’s smart new branch on the Via Savona in Milan’s Zona Solari district, and the service these days is much faster than customers have previously experienced. The reason? Unwilling to throw out the bank’s legacy banking applications, totaling some 90 million lines of Cobol, but unable to keep them running under IBM’s vintage OS/2 Presentation Manager operating system, Whincup has used a proprietary legacy integration tool from Jacada to connect the Cobol to IBM’s WebSphere — running in a Linux partition on the bank’s mainframe.
The result: formerly disjointed applications now run slickly in a Web browser, yielding faster transaction times, less time spent training tellers — and many more opportunities for cross-selling the bank’s services.
Billed by insiders as one of Europe’s largest Linux projects, the Zona Solari branch is piloting the new system, says Whincup. Once testing is complete, full rollout will begin in May. One decision to be made before then: whether to leave the branch desktops running Windows XP, as in the Zona Solari pilot, or move them to Linux as well. “Both of the next two branches to pilot the system will be using Linux [on the desktop],” Whincup says.

Myth 6: Bug fixes are faster and less expensive.

Commercial open source companies know how to use the open source projects. To remain an ongoing concern, these companies have to fix bugs immediately to completion and submit the fixes to the community so they are available in ongoing releases. That’s part of their value-add. As cool new features are added to open source, which often happens faster than in private software, commercial open source companies can plug it into their product quickly. When organizations go it alone, and try to fix within then sure, it will take longer and probably be more expensive.

Myth 7. Open source means open standards.

Open source is just a licensing model and it does not necessarily mean that good developmental practices would be followed. However, it is very important for organizations to use good development practices for open sources because even proven commercial software have had the same problems as proven open source software. Remember, not all software in open source are created evenly. Please note that bad software development practices are more prevalent in open source technology.

Myth 8. Open Source is all about licenses.

Most of the people thinks that if they are getting the source code, then its an open source. But unfortunately, this is not the truth. In fact, open source is about internet-enabled collaboration. Licenses just sets out the rules designed to make sure that companies don’t undermine the playing field.
At bottom, Open Source is a software development methodology, not a political belief. Sun’s Community Source License represent the boundaries of the phenomenon. What “rules” are required to influence an open source community, and what are the beliefs that get in the way?
Rest of the things needed to be learned from open source communities which are the techniques of networked collaboration that they’ve pioneered. Open source software projects have developed techniques-the use of mailing lists, distributed access to version control software, techniques of peer review, discussion and voting on features, rapid response to user feedback and opportunities for user participation–that can be applied fruitfully to the development of any kind of software.
Today every body knows about Apache, but a few know about Collab.Net, founded by Apache Group co-founder Brian Behlendorf. Whose main task is to develop various kinds of infrastructure services for collaborative projects. It’s first product is SourceXchange, which is a marketplace for open source development, in which companies can put up RFPs for software they want written, and independent developers can bid on the projects. I hope that’s a prudential step in the development of open source technologies based projects.

Myth 9: Price is the major attraction of acquiring open source.

The major benefit of open source technology is its price. Majority of people think that you download software from the net and do not pay a rupee and that lures companies to use open source technology. But majority of the companies using open source technologies have a different opinion. They feel that it is not about the cost associated with the software that makes them use open source technology but the effectiveness with which the software can serve their purpose. Many companies feel that if open source technology was an inferior solution, they would not have opted for it and would like to go for other viable commercial options.

Myth 10. Money using Open Source !!! No way.

I’ll start with Red Hat directly. Their success at putting software in a box and selling it only helps to perpetuate the myth that most software is written for sale. In fact, not only me but everybody cant disagree that a software is written by you is for use in your businesses. It’s a tool, like any other, with a set of build vs. buy tradeoffs.
Yea, Its true that open source software minimizes the cost that is spent on existing commercial software. Open source software development reduce the margins of existing players, maximizes innovation, and expands the market-for players who are able to quickly understand and play by the new rules.
The Internet, a disruptive technology based on open standards and open source software, has created huge new markets away from the software. I mentioned Yahoo! previously. You can make a good argument that the explosion of the web is a direct outgrowth of the open source movement. But I’m not just talking about the role of a free operating system like FreeBSD and a free Web server like Apache. The fact that there are millions of sites for Apache and the search engines to index relies on the fact that HTML itself (the language in which web pages are written) is open. Most people who build Web pages do so by imitation–the Web browser includes a “view source” menu item that lets you see how any feature is implemented, and makes it easy to copy it. That’s open source in action at a grassroots level. So I can make a strong argument, which the founders of Yahoo! will echo, that Yahoo! and many of the other high-profile Internet opportunities, are actually a direct outgrowth of open source. As one of the people who sparked the web revolution, I can personally attest to the importance of open source in our early efforts.

Myth 11. Big companies don’t use open source software.

Its a very significant point. Stories like this abound in the Open Source community. I’ll again mention the sendmail here. Greg Olson, the CEO of Sendmail Inc., recounts a conversation with the IS department at a large bank. He noticed from characteristics of the mail sent out from the bank that they used sendmail, and asked if they’d go on record. They denied that they used sendmail, until he showed them the tracks their email server was leaving in cyberspace. We can see another example, Perl, which is very popular for banking application, but why personals never mention it properly, I don’t know. I think , this is quite enough for putting my point.

To conclude, in terms of the disruptive power of open source technologies with regard to current companies: open source projects are managed by individual developers, not by companies. As Larry Augustin of VA Linux Systems (who probably has more of an open-source all star team than any other company) remarks, this is an enormous shift of power. When a leading open source developer moves on, his project (and the status that goes with it) moves with him. A comparison of the film industry, with its studio-dominated system of the thirties and forties replaced by the star-dominated system of today, bears some thought.
If this power shift meant that key projects were controlled by single individuals rather than by distributed teams, there might be reason to fear this change. But the unique characteristics of open source, in which key developers lead but do not unilaterally control their projects, provide insurance both against the loss of a key developer and against that developer taking the software in a bad direction.
A final point about open source itself that bears thought, It’s already had major impact, but there’s more to come. Keep your eyes open, and prepare for more positive surprises!!!