COTS versus OSS: Why
Open Source versus Commercial Software is an important consideration that is often overlooked. This article provides a high level overview of open source considerations. Open source is being adopted by developed nations and corporations at a greater pace than developing economies. Organizations of all kinds are consciously adopting open source software for critical business needs: Deutsche Börse Group, Deutsche Bank, the Danish government, BlueScope Steel, NASA, the Associated Press, J.P. Morgan Chase and Google. There have been many government initiatives around open source software, as governments in Brazil, China, India, Korea, Japan, Europe, Australia and the United States, as well as the United Nations, considers open source policy and options. And large information technology vendors such as IBM, Intel, Hewlett- Packard, Oracle, SAP, Sun Microsystems and Dell are supporting open source (Gustafson, Koff n.d.). What is the catch? Like all software – open source too has its co...