Many big MNC companies are now gradually moving towards open source software. I'm able to see my company encouraging people to use open source tools and features. But we have to make sure the data is safe and secure. We cannot use any open source software that can easily track client data. That can potentially become a security incident. But for development purpose many companies have already started thinking about using open source software for their development needs.
Many companies in India tried to even change the operating system to Linux in order to save some money in the software they purchase to setup a basic system for all the employees. The Government of India had been using Linux based systems in many government offices. The reason is because the options we get in paid software is available for us in open source itself and that is the reason why people try to explore other operating systems like Ubuntu when we already have a stable Windows operating system. In commercial zones the software they use should definitely be a paid one because if they get caught during audit, their licences will be cancelled.
Purchasing and maintaining softwares is pain
It is quite true that maintaining softwares and purchasing softwares for company needs is a painful job. For every company to kick start and facilitate the employees, they have to purchase lots of softwares for the system they use. It all starts with the purchasing of operating system licences. From there every common software we use in our office is mostly a paid software. It takes lots of money in terms of hardware and software to on board a new employee. Companies think about investing so much on a person because they have to get everything in return from the person.
Off-shore outsourcing emerged because of this. As the software cost and maintainance cost for an employee ID very high, companies in countries that are already developed wanted to invest and hire employees from countries that are developing. This makes the business very cheap because the company need not pay very high to the employees. In some countries we can get things done for a very cheap price.
Advantages of open source
The new era is all about open source. We have been slowly transforming towards using open source software applications. The basic needs are available for free now and the company charges only for premium features in a particular software. It is also a great strategy. I'm able to see many companies and developers moving towards using open source software. There are lots of advantages in using open source.
- We need not worry about any legal issues and go ahead with open source.
- Open source products gives us flexibility to make our own modifications to the code based on the needs.
- Open source products easily get community support because you don't have to rely on the company to get answers for any questions. There will be people online who can help you get answers.
- Contributions can also be directly made to the open source projects in the form of pull requests.
- For open source products we will be having many co-users who will also be using the product along with us. There will be community forum where we can get answers.
- Open source code can be easily forked and we can make our own product by enhancing the existing code or by adding features to the code.
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Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://bala-blog.com/corporate-companies-transforming-towards-open-source/