A Belief in Open Source Software
Open Source Software has been one of the great new movements in computing in the past decade. Someone, an individual or a company can create a piece of software and distribute it incredibly cheaply. Others can then come along and modify that software freely and so improve that software - although all credit must be given to the previous author.
It’s possible to charge for free open source software, but the charge is usually for support services such as installation and maintenance rather than for the software itself.
Evolutionary Pressure
In this way, software evolves – sometimes rapidly, sometimes not. If it’s popular it evolves incredibly quickly. And if a commercial entity builds open source software it’s in its interests to keep the software desirable and up to date or someone else will come along and improve on it and possibly take away their paying support and implementation market.
Of course, this isn’t without weaknesses. If you buy into the software too early you may find that it’s not yet fully developed. You’ll then find yourself locked into a spiral of upgrades in order to maintain security and features while reducing bugs. These upgrades are free, but the time and effort required to keep up won’t be.
Our Approach
We won’t recommend any open source software that is not well supported and already well developed. We prefer not to adapt or modify the core software, but often write our own extensions. Some of these will become available for free on this website. Others are available at a charge but because they are open source the client has every right to give away or even sell our work on – just so long as all copyright and sources are acknowledged.
Profits are made through our consultancy, systems management and by supporting the software that we sell. There is no profit in itself on the software and, in fact, we make available entirely freely the software that we use to build the systems we sell.
At interconnect IT we’re committed to the principles and ethos of Open Source Software, its transparency, and its flexibility.
If you want to read more about the Open Source Initiative we recommend their site http://opensource.org/index.php
TrackBack Address.
Leave a comment