Open software is not free: Red Hat
Patrick Budmar | Oct. 14, 2013
Software vendors dispels the myth that open source software has no costs involved.
Open source is a development model and not a support one that does bug fixing, according to Red Hat global CEO and president, Jim Whitehurst.
"On a conceptional level, open source is a development model to come up with great software," he said.
One of the problems Whitehurst highlights with open source software is that the things that make it an attractive development model, such as breaking problems down into small pieces and rapid fixing, also make it challenging.
"It's very modular, and the saying in the open source community is that we don't do bug fixes, we fix it in the next release, but you release early release often," he said.
While Whitehurst admits that the approach is "great for adding functionality," he said it leads to problems for someone trying to run a business.
"If you put a $100 million dollar billing system on Linux, two to five years from now you want it to work," he said.
Every time there is a bug that gets fixed, Whitehurst said it only gets fixed upstream in Linux, or there is a patch.
However, if a business is running a three year old version of Linux, the upstream people are typically not maintaining it.
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Open software is not free: Red Hat