As you read this blog on the web browser there is quite a possibility that this is being served by free software developed by people who might not have any links between them, except that of their contribution to this said software. Why they did it? There is no answer as a right answer to this. But what is perceived to be the best answer is only for a reward of honour. They do it as there are computer geeks and they love to show, enhance their knowledge. What I believe they have got the urge to see that there piece of code is being used and appreciated by people; probably it gives them the kick.
This initiative surely gives a big kick to the computer software world. Today most of the back ground jobs that software performs are quite stable and are almost a standard in IT world. Now this interestingly moves to the business applications side too. There are fairly stable CRM and ERP available in the open source world. There are questions being asked that this has got into a serious phase of computing now and without support and ownership this is not reliable to get into.
I being an open source enthusiast myself thought to test the water myself. So I got stated with a popular open source CRM. It was a breeze to do the installation, to understand the running of the software it took some amount of reading on the net and cool two days of mine to get going. During this phase I could test and find out how to get the support and to my astonishment all the questions I had some had almost read my mind and answers were available. I could also find freelancers offering support for a small price, to do the installation, train and customise the solution for me. What more support could I have asked for? I understand being in SMB segment myself all this is viable but for large enterprises it is going to be a bit difficult. I am convinced once these freelancers turn into companies providing expertise in these solutions these gaps would be bridged.
Few days ago a friend of mine who works in one of the MNC IT Company which has made the colour blue related to it in some way introduced one of his friend to me. This person’s company is just providing services for open source hospital management. A leading political party in India, which I could say is more IT savvy then any of its oppositions is all on open source software. They realise that today winning elections in India is all about data analysis and to act on the same, the system can be called PIS (Political Intelligence system) contrary to MIS what is being used by the businesses around the globe.
I hope people from the biggest software companies are not reading my blog, any ways I need not bother as even my wife is not reading this either. I was browsing thru the open source projects and I came to a project called Exact OS. It really excited me to note the contents of this project; these guys are now re building windows OS from scratch for the open source world. Going by my experience, work progresses at a lightning speed in open source world. What I am seeing in few years we might not pay any of these softwares. I am sure the software companies of today will find some other way to make their buck in coming flatter world.
This has been one of my most favourite topics and I would have gone on and on but for the time I have in my hand I need to truncate it. May be I will revisit this in some other fashion. I also wanted to drift a bit from the political blogs which I was getting into. If someone is reading this blog and wants to shed some view on this, or has completely contrary view is welcome, precisely for that reason I have put the question mark at the end of the heading.
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