The Power of Free and

Open Source Software

Harvey Alferez
Faculty of Engineering and Technology
Montemorelos University, Mexico
2 Scenarios
 1st Scenario

You need to upgrade the software for your

desktop at an Adventist institution

You have heard MS Windows Vista Business and

MS Office Small Business 2007 are your best
options

$200 MS Windows Vista + $350 MS Office 2007 = $550

 1st Scenario (Cont.)

Is there any other option?

 1st Scenario (Cont.)

Is there any other option? TCO

Performance Scalability
Market Security
Reliability
 2nd Scenario

Software Component
 2nd Scenario (Cont.)

Modular Substitution

Provided and Used

Interfaces
Reuse
Reuse
Reuse
Reuse
Lower development cost!

Higher Quality!

Shorter development time!

 Repository of Common
Components (Commonalities)
 Security

Data Report
Access Generation

Repository of Common
Components (Commonalities)
 Security

Data Report
Access Generation

Repository of Common
Components (Commonalities)
 Shareware
Freeware Free software
Open Source software
Proprietary software
FLOSS
 Free Software
"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price

The program's users have the four essential

freedoms:

- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose

- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it
to make it do what you wish
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community
benefits
(Free Software Foundation, 2009b)
 Free Software (Cont.)

GnewSense (GNU/Linux)
 Free Software (Cont.)

Blender

GNUCash
 Free Software (Cont.)

Audacity
Cinelerra
 Open Source Software

A development method for software that harnesses

the power of distributed peer review and
transparency of process

The promise of open source is better quality, higher

reliability, more flexibility, lower cost
(Open Source Initiative, n.d.)
 Open Source Software (Cont.)

OpenOffice
 Free Software Open Source Software

The term free software The term open source tend

emphasizes the to place more emphasis on
ideological aspects of the business advantages
software, including the of the software.
ethical or moral aspects
Technical excellence as
the primary goal, and
sharing of the source code
is seen as a means of
achieving that goal

Comparison of Free Software with Open Source Software

 Free and Open Source Software
(F/OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS)

Has been proposed as a means of overcoming

the problems with the terms free software and
open source software
(FreeOpenSourceSoftware.com, 2009)
 Proprietary Software

Software that is not free or semi-free

Its use, redistribution or modification is

prohibited, or requires you to ask for
permission, or is restricted so much that you
effectively can't do it freely
(Free Software Foundation, 2009a)
 Freeware

Commonly used for packages which permit

redistribution but not modification (and their
source code is not available)

Don't use “freeware” to refer to free software

(Free Software Foundation, 2009a)

 Shareware

Software which comes with permission for people to

redistribute copies, but says that anyone who
continues to use a copy is required to pay a license
fee

Shareware is not free software, or even semi-free:


For most shareware, source code is not available

Shareware does not come with permission to make
a copy and install it without paying a license fee
(Free Software Foundation, 2009a)
Why Free and Open Source Software
for the Adventist Church?
Facts in 6 areas:

1. Market share
2. Reliability
3. Performance
4. Scalability
5. Security
6. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
 1. Market Share
FLOSS dominates web serving.
August 1995 - July 2009: Apache 47.17%, IIS 23.34%

(Netcraft, 2009)
 1. Market Share (Cont.)


An IBM-sponsored study on Linux suggested that GNU/Linux
has “won” the server war as of 2006, as 83% were using
GNU/Linux to deploy new systems versus only 23% for
Windows
(Blankenhorn, D., 2006)


Half of all mission-critical business applications are
expected to run on GNU/Linux by 2012
(Betts, B., 2007)
 1. Market Share (Cont.)


A 2004 InformationWeek survey found that 67% of companies
use OSS/FS products, with another 16% expecting to use it
in 2005; only 17% have no near-term plans to support OSS/FS
products
(D'Antoni, H., 2004)


In a survey of business users by Forrester Research Inc., 52%
said they are now replacing Windows servers with Linux
(Hamm, S., 2005)


A survey in May 2004 found that over 75% of all DNS domains
are serviced by an OSS/FS program
(Moore, D., 2004)
 1. Market Share (Cont.)


MySQL’s market share is growing faster than Windows
(LaMonica, M., 2004)


Internet Explorer has been losing marketshare to OSS/FS
web browsers (such as Mozilla Firefox) since mid-2004
(McMillan, R., 2004)
 1. Market Share (Cont.)


InformationWeek’s February 2005 survey reported significant
use of GNU/Linux, and that 90% of companies anticipate a
jump in server licenses for GNU/Linux

(InformationWeek Research, 2005)


Optaros, a consulting firm, reports that 87% of organizations
are now using open-source software; BusinessWeek claims
that this demonstrates that OSS/FS has greatly expanded into
businesses
(Lacy, S., 2005)
 1. Market Share (Cont.)


IDC’s Spring 2006 survey found that developers around the
world are increasing their use of OSS/FS
− IDC surved over 5,000 developers from 116
countries in the spring of 2006. They found that
OSS/FS is “being used by 71% of the developers
in the world and is in production at 54 percent of
their organizations. In addition, half of the global
developers claim that the use of open source is
increasing in their organizations.”

(Vaughan-Nichols, S.J., 2006)

 2. Reliability


IBM ran a series of extremely stressful tests for 30 and 60
days, and found that the GNU/Linux kernel and other core OS
components operated consistently and completed all the
expected durations of runs with zero critical system failures
(Ge, L., Scott, L., & VanderWiele, M., 2003)


A study by Coverity found that the Linux kernel had far fewer
defects than the industry's average
(Lemos, R., 2004)
 2. Reliability (Cont.)


80% of the top ten most reliable hosting providers ran OSS/FS,
according to Netcraft’s May 2004 survey
(NetCraft, 2004)


An in-depth analysis (published in the Communications of the ACM)
found good evidence that OSS/FS code quality appears to be at
least equal and sometimes better than proprietary software
(Samoladas, I., et. al., 2004)

A detailed study of two large programs (the Linux kernel and the
Mozilla web browser) found evidence that OSS/FS development
processes produce more modular designs
(MacCormack, A., Rusnak, J., & Baldwin, C., 2004)
 3. Performance


GNU/Linux has produced better SPEC values than Windows/
IIS in several cases, even when given inferior configurations

(Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation SPEC, 2009)


eWeek found in its tests that the OSS/FS program MySQL was
quite comparable to the proprietary Oracle database
program, and the pair outperformed other proprietary programs

(Dyck, T., 2002)

 3. Performance (Cont.)


Benchmarks comparing Sun Solaris x86 and GNU/Linux found
many similarities, but GNU/Linux had double the
performance in web operations
(Bourke, T., 2003)


Anandtech’s August 2005 comparison of Mac OS X and
GNU/Linux found that the Linux-based system ran five to
eight times faster on server tasks (specifically using MySQL)
(De Gelas, J., 2005)
 4. Scalability


GNU/Linux is used in 78% of the world’s 500 fastest
supercomputers, most of the world’s ten fastest
supercomputers... including the world’s most powerful
supercomputer

(Lyons, D., 2005)

 5. Security


Summaries as of August 2005 suggest Internet Explorer is
still more dangerous than the OSS/FS Firefox

(Hammond, D., 2005)


78% (284/365) of the time in 2006 Internet Explorer was
vulnerable to dangerous known attacks, for which no patch
to fix them was available, compared to 2% (9/365) for Mozilla
Firefox
(Krebs, B., 2006)
6. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

TCO for MS Windows 2000 vs. TCO for Red Hat Linux (Wheeler, D., 2007)

TCO for MS Windows 2000 vs. TCO for Red Hat Linux (Wheeler, D., 2007)
6. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
(Cont.)

Forrester Research found that the average savings on TCO
when using OSS/FS database management systems
(DBMSs) is 50%
(Sanders, T., 2006)


In August 2005, Robert Frances Group (RFG) found Linux on
x86 had a significantly lower TCO than Windows (40% less)
or Solaris (54% less) as an application server
(Robert Frances Group, 2005)
 Examples


A NASA technical report describes in detail an approach for
NASA to release some of its software as open source
software
(NASA, 2008)


Some states, such as Massachusetts, have a formal policy
encouraging the use of open standards
(Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 2009)
 Examples (Cont.)


Munich, Germany (the third largest German city) has decided
to migrate all of its 14,000 computers in public
administration to GNU/Linux and other OSS/FS office
applications, dropping Microsoft’s Windows in the process
(Ocohido, B., 2003)


In July 2002, UK Government published a policy on the use
of Open Source Software. Including: UK Government will
consider OSS solutions alongside proprietary ones in IT
procurements. Contracts will be awarded on a value for money
basis
(OGC, 2002)
 Examples (Cont.)


Brazil’s government is planning to switch 300,000
computers to Linux says a January 2005 story

(Goldmark, A., 2005)

 Where to Start?

2 levels to start with free and open source

software:

1. Implementation

2. Usage
Where to Start? (Cont.)

1. Implementation of
Free and Open
Source Software

Organization for the IT Integration

Framework (Alferez, G.H., 2009a)
 Where to Start? (Cont.)

1. Implementation of Free and Open Source

Software

http://fit.um.edu.mx/openadventist/
Open Adventist (Alferez,G.H., 2009b)
 Where to Start? (Cont.)

2. Using Free and Open Source Software

Free Software Directory (http://directory.fsf.org/)


Business and productivity

Database

Education

Mathematics

Science

Video

Audio

And much more!!!
 Where to Find Free and Open
Source Software (Cont.)
2. Using Free and Open Source Software

SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/)
 Conclusions

Free and Open Source Software are excellent
options for Adventist institutions: Cost, quality,
time to market!

We need to integrate in order to build more
FOSS

No piracy!

“Freely you have received, freely
give.” Mattew 10:8
 More Researches

http://fit.um.edu.mx/harvey/
Thank You!
 References

Alferez, G.H. (2009a). Grupos de Investigación Tecnológica en Universidades

Adventistas: Educación y Misión. 39th International Seminar on the Integration of
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 References (Cont.)

Bourke, T. (2003). Sun Versus Linux: The x86 Smack-down. Retrieved August 30, 2009,
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 References (Cont.)
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 References (Cont.)

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ml

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 References (Cont.)
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 References (Cont.)
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 References (Cont.)

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