Why choose open source

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Contact Contact. Why Open Source. Decreasing Popularity of Proprietary Software Believe it or not, proprietary software is no more the first choice for enterprises. The Future is Open Source. Flexibility and adaptability. Proprietary software are commercial developments; the source code is only accessible to the vendor.

Expensive consultant teams are necessary for integration and extensions. With Open Source Software, the source code of the software is fully accessible. This allows a high degree of flexibility for individual adaptations. Independence from vendor. The use of proprietary software binds companies to the manufacturer in the long term.

Vendor lock-in makes changing to alternative offers more difficult due to high exchange costs and high cost for integration, adaptation, and further development. Software quality and security.

Enterprise Open Source Software provides solutions that offer a variety of benefits: high-quality source code, stability, performance, and a high level of security. Global communities ensure ongoing development and promote a high level of innovation.

Security gaps are quickly discovered and closed under the scrutiny of many eyes. Uniform standards for interoperability. Stable and tested technologies based on open standards provide high performance and compatibility with other software solutions and IT systems. With open APIs, it can integrate with any of your future systems as new APIs can be quickly released, connected, and exchanged seamlessly. Best total cost of ownership. Red Hatters are encouraged to contribute to problem solving, no matter their role or experience level.

For example, the Red Hat IT team knew that our path to a hybrid cloud infrastructure would require cultural as well as organizational and technological changes to achieve this transformation. The team shifted to follow these principles and adopt a DevOps culture. Following standards of meritocracy, transparency, community, collaboration, and inclusivity helps us foster an organization that meets market demands and brings value to our customers.

Our culture is built on openness and transparency. Our employees are encouraged to act, debate, and share. This lets us bring the best ideas to our technologies and customers. Over time, these iterative improvements bring about faster innovation at scale. With an eye on the future, our flexible, stable, open source infrastructure and tools allow for the optimization of existing IT environments to ready them for modern business needs.

See how community, meritocracy, and a free exchange of ideas can unlock potential across a range of disciplines. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst explains how open leadership can encourage the best ideas and attract the brightest talent.

Our corporate citizenship and sustainability programs aim to strengthen the communities where we live and work. Open hybrid cloud Support Developers Partners Start a trial. There are no license fees to pay, either. As a commercial service, costs apply only to implementation, setup, configuration, maintenance, documentation, and support services.

Through open source communities, you can easily contact other developers from other countries, ask them questions, and learn from them, as well as the code or artwork they have written and published.

This encourages global teamwork and collaboration which improves and diversifies the applications of shared technology.

You will find that open source communities are created and thrive because everyone has a common goal to support and improve the code more quickly, more innovatively, and more effectively, such that the community and beyond can reap the benefits. The use of open source standards does not limit the available software pool to a single software, but widens it. Using open source, you can choose from among a variety of different implementations and software solutions according to your own unique needs.

Open source is vital to the educational advancement of all because both information and resources are now freely available. You can learn from other developers how they are creating code and using the software that they have shared through open source. As open source software brings new ideas and contributions, the developer community becomes an increasingly vibrant community that can share ideas freely.

Through the community, you can meet people with similar interests. FOSS fosters a culture of sharing and experimentation. You are encouraged to be innovative by coming up with new ideas, products, and methods. Be inspired by what you learn from others. Solutions and options can also be marketed much more quickly, and open source allows developers to try, test, and experiment with the best available solutions. Trust By testing your software through open source, customers and users can see what your product is doing what are its limitations.

Customers can take a look at how the software works, validate it, and customize it if necessary. This creates trust in what the product or software is doing. Nobody likes solutions or software products that are mysterious and difficult to understand. The more people that are working together on the code, the higher is the reliability of that code. A code based on collaboration will be superior because it is easier to pick up any bugs and select the best fix.

Security is also improved, as the code is thoroughly assessed and evaluated by the community of developers that have access to it. It is common to have tester groups who check new releases. Any issues that may arise are fixed diligently by the community.

FOSS has not been a niche market for long. The most prominent examples are Linux-based computer systems that are in use everywhere — from web servers, to TVs, to network appliances like wireless access points.

This immensely reduces licensing costs and increases the stability of the core infrastructure on which many fields, companies, and industries depend. Companies like Facebook and Google use FOSS to run their services — this includes the website, the Android phone, as well as the search engine, and the Chrome web browser.

The list remains incomplete without mentioning the Open Source Car OSCar [4,5], OpenStreetMap [6], Wikimedia [7] as well as LibriVox [8], a service that provides free audiobooks read by volunteers from all over the world.

Below, you will find a selection of case studies that we think might inspire you to use FOSS-based solutions. The shantytown slum community of Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria houses nearly 95, people. A complete map of this town is now available on Google maps due to the availability of Open Source coding in Africa, courtesy of the Code for Africa Initiative together with the World Bank [9]. Originally, Makoko did not appear on any maps or city planning documents [23].

At one point, it was only 3 dots on the map, regardless of the fact that it is one of the largest slums in Africa with a complex system of waterways and houses. Through data collection, this initiative created jobs for women from the community, who were taught to use drones to collect the data needed to create a map of the community. The collected data, which included highly detailed pictures and information about the waterways, streets, and buildings, were analyzed by data analysts before being uploaded online using OpenStreetMap.

If this initiative had not been performed using closed source software, the costs and funds required to do this would have been prohibitive due to the additional cost of items such as data, funds to pay the staff, buying the hardware, transport, logistics costs, licensing, and permits.

The primary areas of research include nanomedicine, chemical-physical processes and materials, and genetic simulations.