Three Reasons Open Source Will Save The Economy
Times are tougher than Chuck Liddell.
Hey, is your economy down?
All right, bad joke, but it is the country’s current collective bellyache. 760,000 jobs lost already this year according to the Bureau of Labor. Businesses are frantically jettisoning people-weight just to stay afloat. Times are tougher than Chuck Liddell. I think I saw my old CEO in line at the soup kitchen last Tuesday.
My friends, I’m here to tell you that in the face of grim economic turmoil there are opportunities. The fundamentals of open source are strong. Open source software is going to save the global economy.
Sir Isaac’s Third Law: spending trends in the marketplace are reversing course as companies search for faster, cheaper solutions to everyday business problems. Open source anyone?
Open source software is freely available, easily downloadable, and deployed and modified without any licensing cost. Though not strictly free-in-house administration and support costs money — open source software can provide a tremendous boost to struggling small and medium businesses. Three reasons open source is going to save us — watch out while I lay ‘em on ya.
You always make time when there’s less money.
You got two resources with which to do business: time, and money. Build vs. buy arguments die out when the economy softens because enterprise software is expensive. Take databases. MySQL, PostGres, and Ingres can be downloaded, installed, and up and running for little if any cost. Businesses will trade support time for fiscal cost.
Free software removes previous barriers to entry.
It’s cheaper and easier to start a business on open source. Microsoft SQL Server starts at $1,500. MySQL is free. Photoshop costs $699. GIMP is free. Microsoft Office costs between $149 and $499 depending on the version you purchase. Open Office is free. With only 20 employees, using Open Office can save you $3,000 to $10,000.
You buy the shovel, but you want the hole.
It’s amazing how easy it is to forget that software is just a tool. Companies purchase software so their employees can execute specific tasks. You don’t need a laser-guided shovel with built-in GPS navigation to dig your hole. A plain ol’ shovel will get the job done just fine.
So buck up, little campers, open source software even comes with a free pack of weenies and a bag of marshmallows. Seriously, folks, go take the money you save by going open source and invest it in keeping the people around who really run your business. They need those jobs now more than ever.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 am
The Evil Genius lives…
Here is a post I wrote earlier this year along the same vein.
How to Save $10 Million Dollars While Staring into the Abyss
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Good call! Especially the part about taking the money and investing it in your people. Being at a non-profit, I’ve taken an open source approach out of necessity as much as preference and it’s definitely paid off. I’ve got great people that are expert enough to work with any toolset I ask. Can’t beat that.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
There is another trend - the services being built on top of open source software. These are more the holes rather than shovels. The shovels are so 5 years ago. A business starting today has a very good chance of not even looking at using Open Office. They go right to Google Apps for my Domain and let the Goog handle all of that running of the infrastructure stuff. The business does 3 things - buy a pipe, run a LAN and buy PCs. These are straight forward. Open Source? They don’t even bother knowing what the words mean. Yes, they may use Python. But only because Google Apps requires it. The Goog could just as easily have required C++. The business buys special services/apps from folks building on top of the Goog or Amazon EC^2. The world is changing very fast. The business value is rapidly moving outside the business and away from the internal IT shop.
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
[...] Three Reasons Open Source Will Save The Economy. Only three? I bet we could think of way more. (0) PreviousPost [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Your third point struck me as particularly interesting. I find that all too often people become obsessed with one particular method of achieving a goal instead of actually achieving the goal.
It’s unfortunate just how frightened (it really is a fear) people in decision making positions are of open source options. And while the economy in a slump is a terrible thing, one silver lining is that influential people may look on toward open source, as you said. Time will tell.
December 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I’m translating/adapting this into romanian. Posting it to my blog. Nonenglish people need to read this too!:)
Good job.
December 3rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
[...] Acest post este tradus şi adaptat după cel original care poate fi citit la http://whurley.com/2008/12/03/three-reasons-open-source-will-save-the-economy/ [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
[...] Three Reasons Open Source Will Sav… [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
[...] Original page [...]
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Three Reasons Open Source Will Save The Economy | whurley…
You got two resources with which to do business: time, and money. Build vs. buy arguments die out when the economy softens because enterprise software is expensive. Take databases. MySQL, PostGres, and Ingres can be downloaded, ……
December 3rd, 2008 at 10:21 pm
[...] Source Will Save The Economy Posted December 4, 2008 Filed under: Uncategorized | From whurley.com, the man makes a compelling point Open Source is the new [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 7:30 am
[...] more @ http://whurley.com/2008/12/03/three-reasons-open-source-will-save-the-economy/ [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 8:31 am
[...] Only three weeks left and I’ll be no longer an Oracle DBA. And to say the truth: I’m pretty much fed up with most of Oracle’s products, especially the (buggy?) database with all it’s useless ORA-600’s… Besides: Open Source Will Save The Economy. [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 11:21 am
[...] the whole piece at [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
[...] full story is available by clicking here. Rate this: 3.2 Sphere: Related Content yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = “Three Reasons Open [...]
December 4th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
But many people don’t trust on open source, freeware, Gpl or this type of software because they think money is only way for best things.
by the way nice think about this matter
December 5th, 2008 at 1:46 am
[...] Three Reasons Open Source Will Save The Economy. Only three? I bet we could think of way more. Go to Original Source [...]
December 5th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Good post, and great shovel analogy, I loved it lol.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:17 am
As if things can’t get an worse with the economy Peter Coy at BusinessWeek just published a story entitled “Job Losses: 533,000 in November”:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/dec2008/db2008124_194018.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story
The short of it is in the title, but the details are an eye-opening read.
December 6th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
[...] on other costs that can be completely avoided: one way of doing this would be to convert to using open source software, while retaining or recruiting a workforce able to work with, and adapt to, a variety of software [...]
December 7th, 2008 at 7:44 am
[...] - The Pampered Patient Why Open Source Will Save The Economy December 6, 2008 From whurley.com, the author proselytizes simple and succinctly the the great potential of Open Source during lean [...]
December 7th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hmmm. I am a big fan of open source software packages, however I don’t know if this argument is logically valid. Yes, individual businesses will save money by opting for open source software and might be able to keep their employees. But then what about the companies that provide non-open source software? They will have to downsize…
You see, the fundamental problem still exists.
People are going to lose jobs. It’s just a question of where the job losses will come from.
Sorry, no magic band-aid for the economy.
December 7th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Another interesting article about open source…
Three Reasons Open Source Will Save The Economy……
December 8th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
[...] From Whurley, the Evil Genius… [...]
December 9th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Thanks to everyone who participated in this discussion. Especially those who translated this post into other languages.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:54 am
[...] whurley.com - Three Reasons Open Source Will Save The Economy [...]
December 11th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Interesting post, but I think you are way, way too optimistic. There’s no such thing as open source truck drivers, open source accountants, open source CEO’s and open source docter’s. “Jobs” does not equal “software”. There’s also no such thing such as free hardware.
It can definitely contribute to the process, but open source software isn’t really going to save the American economy all by itself.
December 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
[...] Evil Genius, Will Hurley, thinks so. Here’s [...]
December 18th, 2008 at 6:43 am
I think ‘open source’ will save the human race - not just the economy. (and actually - I think Open Source will finish off the ‘economy’ as we know know it and hopefully herald a new age of enlightenment - how about that for optimism? ;-))
Solving problems, together, because they need to be solved, and because we can’t do it alone. How companies manage to make a ‘profit’ is another debate… I am not so sure that profit is the best motivation for anything.
I wrote a blog post speculating about this some time ago: Why I think Open-Source Software is key to human evolution…