Open Source vs Proprietary Software

I attended a debate last night organised by Scotland IS on the above topic, with the sub title "Is Open Source a Viable Business Alternative ?". It was chaired by Euan Robertson of Spektra and had two speakers, one from IBM and one from Microsoft speaking respectively for and against Open Source as a viable business model. There was a little vote at the end which was declared a diplomatic draw.

The event was pretty well-attended, must have been close on 100 people there, and there were free drinks sponsored by Melville Craig Recruitment. Each of the speakers was given 20 minutes to argue their case then there was a Q&A session.

There wasn't much new news there for people who follow the topic anyway but for my money the Microsoft speaker actually made the better argument in relation to the topic. Unsurprisingly, most of the people knew which way they would vote before they even entered the room, so it wouldn't have made much difference what the speakers said. The religious wars show no sign of abating. Nobody came forth with the classic definition of Open Source or Free Software being "free" as in free speech rather than free beer.

About the most interesting remark of the evening came in response to a very pertinent question about the upgrade treadmill on which Microsoft has put its customers with its Software Assurance licensing scheme. When asked how this benefited the customer, the Microsoft representative was candid enough to say that if he was working in the open source world he would recommend raising a statue in honour of the person who devised Microsoft's License 6.0 scheme as it was about the best thing which had happened to boost the open source movement in a long time. He was also thoroughly frank about the fact that Microsoft believes it creates things of value, that they therefore expect people to pay for them and that he recommended anyone who didn't agree simply not to buy it. Seems fair enough.

Stepping back from the fundamentalist views, as far as business solutions go, the simple truth remains that it matters less what technology you use than how well you use it. You can build great applications on Linux and on Windows, in the same way that you can build dreadful ones on either. There was an outbreak of brotherly love and tree hugging when both sides pledged allegiance to the one true God of Web Services, then everyone repaired to the bar for more of Melville Craig's free drinks.