Episode: 493
Title: HPR0493: Free and Open Source Software in Business
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0493/hpr0493.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 21:43:51

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Good afternoon, my name is Robert Ladyman. I run a small local IT company. We provide
auditing services and the spokesman software to clients do data protection
act or that sort of thing. This is my contact details. As an aside we use and
have used open source in the business every day for the last 10 years. We don't
run Windows desktops, we don't really run Windows service. We still do some
Windows development for customers because that's what pays the bills
occasionally. But most of our development work is now done in Linux. Now today I'm
going to talk about open source in business. I'm going to focus mostly on the
open source that's available under Windows. Primarily because if you're running
Linux you're liable to have a pretty good knowledge of . . . Hello, come in . . .
Yes, if you're running Linux I'm going to assume you've got a failure of
knowledge. But I will cover some of the other things that are available. You
might not be aware of that run under Linux. I'm going to cover the
opportunities you've got for profit and reducing costs in your business by
using open source software. Those opportunities are available whether you're
a dentist or you run a car shop or you run a big development house or you have
nothing at all to do with software and really I'll cover how you go about
selecting them. So these are sort of business items. You can see a lot of the
time you are using open source possibly without even knowing it. Certainly Google
is the biggest example of a successful open source business they run. Open
source service. That's what you're using using Google. But all of these devices
and a whole load of others have got open source software in there doesn't
necessarily mean Linux or whatever but open source software and mobile phones
are going that way as well. You know for businesses for the people that
develop this it's great. If they open the source and let you share it they get
developers for free it saves them saves them the cost of employment. Give you an
idea of what's out there really these are the sort of things the same things you
can do under Windows. There are some exceptions I'll cover that later. Games is
one thing that is really available under Windows but then we're talking about
open source in business here. I don't know many businesses play games all day
other than games developers. So really you've got everything here and one I came
across recently in fact a couple of weeks ago I was going to research software
people using doing research in drugs have to have regulated software recording
patient information and so on and there's a couple of these available which was
new to me again I encountered that a couple of weeks ago. Now you'll hear the
term open source and I don't know if it's always explained Aaron they will
have explained it if you're in an earlier talk Aaron they will have explained
what the open is all about but in case you don't know I'm going to cover that
now and next slide is the really the only technical slide in there I'm not going
to ask questions but it is quite a technical diagram you don't really need to
remember it but this is really what happens. The programmer writes a script
source code it's called but it's scripted it's it's going to tell a computer
what to do it goes through the magic of compilation doesn't really matter how
now it's a game pops up program so it's we know it's a game it's a program
no pad word they will go through this now classic we know you get this
writes word or it's a that's what you get you don't need this and most of the
time you don't really care because it just works so this is the source it
open source means that if you want and also usually in terms of I think you can
get this okay so that's the open bit and the source bit really so you get
the source code yeah it isn't always free okay this is my definition and not
everyone agrees with this but you've got today it's called free and open source
software but you can get open source software that software for which you get
the source which is in free you're provided with the source so you can make
changes yourself but you're not allowed to sell that source on you set it
back to the original developers and then they release it as a new product I
use products like that under the Windows world you get free software some
antivirus packages completely free but you don't get the source so you don't
pay for it so that's free software then you get what's known as free and open
source which is exactly that doesn't cost you anything and you get to keep
the scripts the source code the originating code you could rebuild it
yourself if you want to okay and all of these apply I'm gonna go from them so
you get the you get the source you don't necessarily get the primary
programmer which you get the source you could hire a programmer later to rebuild
the package from the source that's really it in terms of the science bit why
do you care if you're running a business really but why do you actually want
the source code what I'll just have the exit well what can happen is your
supplier of particularly if it's a niche piece of software say if you're a
dentist let's say that's an example you've got a special piece of software for
a dentist and they go faster or taken over and you can end up with a piece of
software that you can now no longer use and your suck if you've got the source code
you can actually rebuild that for your new PC or your new operating system to
run out of this to say a Windows 7 you've got that if you need to make changes
later you can do that you can hire a hairy sandal wearing techie to come in
and rebuild it for you haven't got to do this so that's why it reads important
in some regulatory fields it's important to have what's known as a scrow which
basically means a legal agreement to the to the effect that if you as a supplier
go bust I get to keep the source code to make sure that they can continue to
use this again in the clinical field you might have a study that is running
for seven to ten years you don't want to lose your software supplier in that
time but if you do and you've got the source code you can continue to develop
the software as you need it if you're a programmer you usually know this yeah
you can you can do all sorts of things one thing but a lot of people don't
realize that free and open source software is your ability to recompile it
rename it file away open office or whatever you want to call it and resell it
that's fine depends on the terms of the license you get the software the source
code under but you can do that often again depending on the license you'll find
that the license will say that if you do you have to supply the next person the
source code as well including the changes you've made but really you know
that's that's it I've done this I've produced a fireball called Guardian Box
if we saw around the world it's now called the fat one Tom Tom Thomas and the
thing BT Homepub so they're all doing the same sort of thing you can't get the
source code for it and so on. Now once I've done that how do these people making
open source software actually make money I mean why would you do this at the
programmer yeah often what you'll find is the programs free the source codes
free you get it all they'll sell you support if you want it now for your
average home user or a small business support might not be important but if
you're a big corporate user usually or often part of your purchasing process is
purchasing the support for the software yeah in fact often the purchase
price of the software is in a different budget than the running costs of the
software purchasing price of the software can be discounted depreciate it's
just like buying and you building for the business that sort of thing but the
running costs are dealt with and you have to have a support contract before you
can have any software in house that's how an open source provider would make
money from you as a business or as a business you can make money as a provider
training training and using stuff yeah everyone buys or not everyone buys
people buy a lot of Microsoft office training the same can apply to open
office yeah and in place you think that that's just not realistic you can see
here yeah when I first got this thought 2008 Red Hat is worth about 340
million it's about 500 million and they go into the standard pause index which
is a index about 500 companies were ready to be a good investment Red Hat
produce open source operating systems not not the small programs will come
to that later and I do this like the I use open source products and build
service for companies and database for companies and so on I contribute back
by either making donations to the developers or by contributing back code
of contributing back code to a few things yeah so it isn't quite as
after it sounds the idea really is to modernize the software the
operating system to certainly get rid of the actual fact that there's a cost
involved in getting the software but to tie down your customers with a
service fee if you're selling this open source software any of the services
that's a better model than selling a software because you're getting a
monthly predictable income you just sell the software once you've sold it two
years down the line there's usually no more income from that piece of
software unless you issue a new version and so on so as a developer it gets you
out of that cycle now as a business you'll probably use to if I buy a copy of
Microsoft word I've got to get one per user yeah license per user with open source
software that's usually not the case I say usually depends on the license
depends sometimes you can get an open source version of no support but if you
buy support you buy a commercial version which has a license again again
depending on the license you might be able to rebrand and modify it and set it
on as your own you don't make claims that it is your own but the changes you've
made in effect make it your own and again depending on the license you might
have to provide the source code on and usually not always you can't change that
license to be more restrictive you can't in general again depending on the
license you can't say to the next person receives a software from you you can't
do what I did with the software which is to develop it and sell it on as I say
it depends on the license caveat emptor if you're going to be buying software check
turns and conditions exactly the same as if you're going to be buying Microsoft
servers you have to know what you're licensing it's quite awkward in some with
some businesses Microsoft particularly as criticism often is that their
licensing structure is opaque so you're never certain with you need a
license per CPU or per server per user that sort of thing so for open source it's
the same thing find out what the licensing terms are and stick with them now again
there's more there's more like this more on licensing really but you might be
thinking well Google here you know they're using open source code surely they
have to give us the code they use more it's available on the internet for
instance but really they're selling the service which is a search service now
because of that they're not giving you the software to give you the service
so they haven't got any duty to provide you with the source code for their
search engines at all under the license that they're using GPL2
particular license that's about there is a new version of GPL3 which we
usually try to get around that and force I use that word force companies who
use open source software for a service to also give you that software it's
been resisted by a number of people even the open source world as well because
they don't see that as a free don't read and you're really removing that
company's freedom to do what they like in the software and sometimes as well
in software as I said before it's about under two licensees you might have
commercial license that ironically enough is usually driven by the
purchaser rather than the vendor purchaser may have a company policy that
says we will have a license per user and that sounds bizarre large companies
can be bizarre so you may well find that you can't get the open source software
and use it in your company if you're a large company because there is no
license that actually yeah and this one's quite important if you're looking
at the source software it might still make it enforceable you might be able to
enforce something with the developer you might not
be incurred in the case of what might be called close source of commercial software
yeah it might be enforceable however if you've ever read a license agreement it
basically says you know your responsibility is you allow to give it to anyone
but if we break your entire system we're not responsible for anything so you
know this idea of a commercial close source license is better isn't always the
case you'll usually find it they explain your liability for for damage if you
just download the program an open source program which you're free to do you're
on your own usually but as I said they all have to slam us and no warranties
at the same as the same for open source so again if you're considering using
open source look at the license look at any disclaimers and so now I
tend to deal with small business to do with some large businesses but
certainly in terms of small businesses this is what I tend to say I'm sure
there's any of you here who do go to small businesses you'll see as well the
antivirus is expired or it's even never been run it's expired usually because
it's supplied with that we those machine they bought and they expired five
years ago and they're usually often rid of the viruses these are all the
sorts of terms it's clamoring it's own open source and available for you if you
come across a business like that or if you are a business like that the next one
really is almost a given which is they'll have bought one copy of Microsoft
software this and it's been installed on all the machines by politics do if you
run a small business and you haven't done that but I'd yet come across a
business that has that to be honest I don't think it's a deliberate attempt to
fraud anyone it's just a case thought that's the disc we've got why wouldn't we
install it on all our machines you've got to open office to do with that
people do with most what you want to do we run it we get word documents more
than our customers and we use open office to open here we'll open and read word
Excel spreadsheets all the rest of it illegal copies of software somebody's
got somebody's using Microsoft project and then blank a copy to use technical
term and brought it in to the office so they can use project at work yeah or
quickly they've got a copy of quickly accounting well there is Quiddler's Lovers
yeah the next one is the one I see quite often here the illegal copies windows
most commonly that's where a machine has gone wrong they've given it to
someone to fix and when it's come back from that someone quite often another
business the solution has been to install a copy of windows professional over
the talk of what was on the machine using that person's license not the original
license the customer so you might be quite surprised that I talk a lot about
licenses when I'm an open source person but licenses are really important
this this I find just not really excusable that's that's that's you are
students on a property there you've got it under license to use one copy
one machine so that's quite what you see and there's new requirements
coming on as well the ICO the data protection has been getting tougher
tougher with data loss and has basically said that if you could to do
something to reduce the risk you should have done it and if you didn't you're in
trouble the example I gave to someone a couple days ago was a council local
council who had locked their portables wearing a cupboard that hadn't encrypted
hard disks and they were in trouble from the ICO because they could have
encrypted the hard disk as well and they should have done that was his approach
there is no source software for that you haven't got to wait for Microsoft to
produce something for you through it second hand PCs I get them sold to me
almost without file I don't think I've ever had one that hasn't had the
data still left on it from the person who had it the first thing to do is wipe
it well actually it's the same and he was like first thing and normally do his
contact them and say did you know the data's here do you want me to back it up
you'd be amazed some people have never even backed up the data from the
government machine training tools they're through as well privacy you can
encrypt your emails to sign it again you know the clinical world you might
take instructions from a principal investing or a principal
investing might get instructions from the sponsor the drug sponsor they need to
know that that email actually came from that person that you know to file
those instructions again that's available I can source and free and encrypting
file transfers as well you know similar sort of thing all the things you see in
the press you know the lost 25 million records it doesn't matter nowadays you
can do that for free again all of these are available and there's solutions to
common problems in a small business and some large businesses as well now
really the style of the show in my opinion is open office it runs under windows
it runs under nine it runs under various other operating systems and it's
basically Microsoft office in all that name it has a word equivalent
Microsoft Word equivalent of months of Excel of PowerPoint this is being
displayed in fact using in press the open office version of PowerPoint it is
though a PowerPoint file so it's opened the other format and it's explained you
can save various formats including Microsoft format and there are occasional
problems with formatting but if you've ever used two conversion of word versions
of word that you'll be used to that anyway and you can use PDF and so on
macros compose a problem if you've gotten them written in Excel or word or
whatever because it's not the same program it looks the same feels same does
notice but it's not the same so again if you're thinking of moving over to it
you would carefully consider this based on what it is you're doing in your
business you've got a lot of macros it's not a wise idea to move to open office
unless you're going to rewrite all of those now out there you'll see some of
these little party bags they have gotten them a copy of Ubuntu which is an
operating for the open source operating system but there's also you become
over to my desk a CD called the open CD which has got an awful lot of this
open software they've been describing on it including open office so
here's an example of what I used a resourceful region recently what's a small
business classically it was the other side of Edinburgh but I couldn't get
there but I used but I called the NC which is open source to actually
remotely control it bring up the desktop on my machine
put Clown in the antivirus I was talking about because I didn't understand
the thing open office because they were for editing the license terms of my
office because they had installed lots of PCs put a firewall in for a hard
one a second device rather than a piece of software which runs on a Windows PC
which is often called a firewall so when that hit they're there it works safe
antivirus and so on okay I also put in a hotel reception system the hotel
reception desk the boss was saying with a PC rubbish it keeps crashing when
I look at it it's completely covered in downloaded screen savers and little
gains and all of a sudden put a line of hotel receptionist so no no we never
do that okay I'm not going to argue with you put in a Linux system I went back
about three weeks later there's no problems just going back to check systems
been running five for three weeks all over the desktop lots of little save
screen savers and all the rest but they couldn't be run because it was a
Linux system not Windows systems you can run all these Trojan and
virus-laden programs so again that's another another solution you can use it
yourself and of course I charge and that's how I make money for fixing their
problem I didn't charge them for this for any of these but I charge them for
fixing it because that that's really what you do now you've probably heard of
Linux linux or however you want to pronounce it but that's as it says it's
just a replacement just a it is a replacement operating system you can use it
to entirely replace Windows if you like you can have it dual-boot Windows
there are lots of flame noise come on I was just waving on the anoteer's call
to them too I don't use it I don't like it I've got that on tape now but I
use something called open source it looks more like Windows to me and you know
that's comforting if you like there's lots of little you'll hear Linux people
say what dissuading running if I was guilty of saying that earlier that's
because we think that's important but it's not it's all pretty much the
sun and it's very rich can like almost every other bit of open source software
gets support from it remember I talked about red hat 300 and 500 million this
year that's what they do give you the operating system to sell you the service
great way to make money why would you actually use it I'm not going to read
read through it one thing I would say is there's no pressure to use it I'm
quite happy to continue fixing people's PCs that's how make money it's great
more Windows users the better really but you know Windows 7 is just coming out
you're probably going to find yourself you know you may have been had a lot of
pressure to move up from XP to VISTA you may have resisted that but the next
move is from VISTA to Windows 7 XP is getting older and older all the time
you're going to be able to go quite a lot of pressure there you would probably
have to upgrade your hardware in order to do that if you're moving from XP to
Windows 7 on necessary instead of that you could put a copy of Linux Linux
on it and continue to use the machine
but one two two three security updates as well so that's a service
they're getting to the operating system but they're also making sure that
that operating system is secure and patched and they'll throw services to the
three as well indeed yeah now obviously there are disadvantages so anyone who
doesn't believe there are just cover your ears up now but documentation that's
a bit of a rude word in the open source word for a lot of projects it usually
some of them are fantastic having said that a lot of people don't need documentation
anyway so what can I say you can't always get support because it's the
program you want to use is developed by two people who have a senior and you know
there's no way it is called but you've got the source code so you could
use it if you're a dentist that's not really an option you know sometimes you
can't get a hardware to work I heard people say are the end of the windows it
just works well if you google for windows driver problems you'll find that's
rubbish so that's the case again and some stuff isn't available
so you can't say he's in the other blender Linux or a program so you could run
it on the Linux or there isn't an open source version of the site account
and say having said that sage accounting didn't run under vista for a number of
years as well so it's no real there's no great difference there if you're
like sometimes they might be regulatory issues as well your regulatory body
may say you must use this it must be in this form so really hopefully
there's opportunities for profit you can rebad and resell of open source software
you can sell it as a service or use it to reduce your costs continue to use
old hardware and so on the one thing I'd like to remind you is you should
consider it as an option when you select when you select the software when
people come to me and say watch I'm using this I'll usually come back to the
probably most annoyingly and say well go and write a stack of our
specification out what he's actually want without reference to what you've
got what you think might be then go and find out what's out there but when
you do consider the open source solutions as well
it isn't the answer to anyone's answer either but what I would say is
consider it and just because it's free
but like it doesn't mean it isn't the cost thanks for listening any questions at
the top
no well thank you very much
thank you for listening to Hackers Public Radio
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