Open Source Companies and Advantages

Day II – (Who’s work is it anyway…?)

The second day involved a brainstorming session on the conditions and suggestions placed by the provider on the enterprise. Most workstations in Moon Nanosystems ran on the Minnows 3003 Professional platform, the rest ran on a custom-made platform which the corp. designed itself for development and storage purposes named Lunaris. Nanosoft suggested an upgrade to every system ranging by the one in the cafeteria to the core developers laboratory to the 3007 edition. Nanosoft was about to cut support for the 3003 edition and from the day it did it, there goes all the work done on that system… all at the mercy of hackers, malware, viruses which swarm in from every corner of the universal internet (does the universe have a corner anyway?) in the same way Hyenas pounce on neglected lion cubs.
Moon Nanosystems was against that idea. They were all accustomed to using the older one. Pleading for special support was no use. Even before the deal was signed, Moon Nanosystems started feeling the pinch. All its data is locked up in the 3003 edition server which is going to lose support, and every big corp. knew what it is to run unsupported software. But then, the reliability that Nanosoft and Whoracle offered was tempting. Still, no fall-back option, no alternative services and no scope to go out of the standards of the provider made Moon Nanosystems managers think otherwise… can we be without Lunaris?
Vendor Lock-in, is one of the biggest problems that enterprises face by choosing a Non-Open Source provider. Once you have all your systems running under the platform that the Vendor suggests (read order) to use, all your data, all your efforts and all your assets are under the mercy of that provider. Many closed source providers don’t have more than one company providing a particular service in a particular popular standard. Like no other company provides support to Windows 2003 Server other than Microsoft itself. Since it is not always a practical option to migrate all your data to another standard, just in case you somehow feel dissatisfied about being under a provider, the provider can, (and will) take advantage of all the power he (indirectly)is entitled over the enterprise. He can inflate prices, he can degrade standards of service or do anything unethical as you, are trapped in his complex web of deception.
Open Source providers on the other hand, have multiple companies providing support for the same standard (which is Linux or BSD in many cases); hence there is some sort of competition, to attract clients with more subsidized costs for more features etcetera. You can always switch to another company without any migration or shifting process in between.

Day III – (Hell, can’t I use my favorite music player even?)

After settling for an unfair compromise hesitantly, Moon Nanosystems decided to discuss about the software which would help create stuff or in other words ‘productive software’ for the developers involving tools, programming interfaces and also development environments. Nanosoft execs placed forward their catalog of software potentially of use to Moon Nanosystems.
Not very surprisingly, Moon Nanosystems was most comfortable with its current development platform which it had been using since several years. In the contract, it has been specified to use ‘Nanosoft certified products’ in order to gain complete benefits of the support. These include all those products which pay royalty to NanoSoft not because they are really very superior or advanced pieces of software which NanoSoft suggests from ‘its heart’.
Nanosoft introduced a long list, including the Sudoku game generator which developers use to play it secretly and also the music player which the staff uses to stream a radio channel across a secret network, and also the Bit Torrent client the staff uses to distribute porn using Moon Nanosystem’s advanced information channels. The entire staff gave an evil stare at the execs… their eyes said just one thing – “We hate the idea!”
This is one of the main problems while working with Closed source providers. They provide support to only limited selections of software which work under their recommended guidelines of development. Supporting such software is relatively easier for such companies. And getting more clients commercial generates profits for them which is a big reason why they force upon such conditions. They know that the client has nowhere else to go…
Open Source ones on the other hand allow you to use just about any piece of software on the Open Source Market. Even if it is a proprietary standard which the enterprise might want to use, they have no problem to provide at least limited support. There is greater freedom to choose across platforms, software, standards and even providers in the Open Source World.

Advantages

Corporations have choices over here, they can either go for a proprietary software based service or they can even go for an Open Source based support.
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More Choice

Greater Freedom

Moon Nanosystems execs took another wild step completely against the likes of its staff. Nanosoft officials started installing their new software while assuring the staff that it would better
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Influence of OSS

In modern times, India has accomplished miracles through the power of collaboration. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has the potential to accomplish yet another set of miracles in automating government and industry, and producing affordable education for all.
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OSS in India

OEM is short for Original Equipment Manufacturers. OEM companies make their products in large volumes and generally sell them to bigger companies who add value to it by incorporating it in a bigger product or just improving the overall feel of the product. However, sometimes, the bigger company is called the OEM and the smaller company is just called the ‘provider.
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