It was a day well spent. First the preparation of my CFA was going on in full momentum and then in the evening we had a lecture from Mr. Venkatesh. He is working as a senior executive in Red Hat and is closely associated with Open Source development there. Although I had read about community developed software earlier also, but today I realized its true potential. He told us how Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds when he initially wrote 10,000 lines of code for the operating system. In the last 18 years through community development this code has become of more than 204 million lines in the Fedora 9 version Sold.
Another question which we asked him was that if open source software is free then from where Red Hat generates money. I meant that what was the revenue model being followed by the company, in response to which he said that although the source is free but we generate money from installation and maintenance services.
The other important aspect of the open source software is that everything is before you. I mean there can be no hidden code implanted in it. Software used in banks, defense etc. cannot work on proprietary software as they can have backdoors which can prove fatal for these applications.
The open source software also results in a great cost reduction as you do not have to pay anything to use it. The policy of software companies and Pharma companies was also taken up but we found that Pharma companies usually involves huge sunk cost and hence cannot afford to leave the patents but software which has zero marginal cost of production should not be so much high priced. He also said that the high pricing of software has lead to its heavy piracy.
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2 comments:
The biggest and greatest power of opensource is that it is open. If i can see the code, i can provide quality review, suggestions for improvements and even create a new version. Given too many eyes, no bug is shallow enough that it can not be caught.
Power of open source is quite evident from your entry. But the thing which is not to be forgotten is, when there is something which people can themselves alter can provide it with the greatest power. And that greatest power is yet to be unleashed.
Bravo..!! Great work man..
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