Followings are some quotes from Scott McNealy, Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems
"It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software"
"Open source does not require you to pay a penny to Microsoft or IBM or Oracle or any proprietary vendor any money."
"The government ought to mandate open source products based on open source reference implementations to improve security, get higher quality software, lower costs, higher reliability - all the benefits that come with open software"
McNealy also mentioned about CIO role which should "have veto power, he right to eliminate any hardware, software or networking product that touches the federal network."
"He or she would have real power, real oversight and employ real consequences for folk that don't realign with the architecture. It's what every business does that the government doesn't"
Java programming language is an open source product used in billions of devices such as mobile phones and computers. Instead of charging for a copyrighted programme, by and large any open source product is publicly available, is licensed under royalty free terms for unrestricted use and has an open code for all to see, copy and adapt for free.
Scott McNealy is absolutely right, about his comments. It is probably about the right time now for any government, enterprise rethink about their platform roadmap. Many of Open Source becomes stable, and as rich in features as those from proprietary vendors, so why should government pays more to support those proprietary?
For myself, I have been encountered with Open Source since the beginning of Linux, while studying at Warwick University. At the time, it was unfriendly to do so, but even since then, it proved to be more stable than any released version of Micros$ft Windows. With helps from pool of developers around the globe now Linux becomes one of the most advance platform of Operating Systems, and it proved to be very robust! (at least compare to the latest Windows)
I promise to write more about my experience on Open Source very soon, as soon as I complete my everyday tasks.
