Selecting technologies means committing to solutions that will support an active, growing business over the long term, so it requires careful consideration and foresight. When an enterprise bets on the wrong horse, the result is often significantly higher development costs and reduced flexibility, both of which can stick around for the long haul.
In the past decade, adoption of open source software at the enterprise level has flourished, as more businesses discover the considerable advantages open source solutions hold over their proprietary counterparts, and as the enterprise mentality around open source continues to shift.
Enterprises looking to make smart use of open source software will find plenty of great reasons to do so. Here are just some of them.
- Community. Open source solutions geared toward the enterprise often have thriving communities around them, bound by a common drive to support and improve a solution that both the enterprise and the community benefit from (and believe in). The global communities united around improving these solutions introduce new concepts and capabilities faster, better, and more effectively than internal teams working on proprietary solutions.
- The power of the crowd. Many hands can deliver powerful outcomes. The collective power of a community of talented individuals working in concert delivers not only more ideas, but quicker development and troubleshooting when issues arise.
- Transparency. Open source code means just that—you get full visibility into the code base, as well as all discussions about how the community develops features and addresses bugs. In contrast, proprietary code produced in secrecy may come with unforeseen limitations and other unwelcome surprises. With open source, you’re protected against lock-in risks and can see exactly what you’re getting.