• Benefits Of Using Open Source Software Oss
• Advantages Of Open Source Software Slideshare

• Open source software in simple terms is free software that you can use in your business. Open source developers choose to make the source code of their software publicly available for the good of the community and to publish their software with an open source license – meaning that other developers can see how it works and add to it.
• List of Advantages of Open Source Software 1. Cheaper than commercially marketed products. Created by skillful and talented people. Highly reliable. There are two main reasons why open source software are reliable. Help you become more flexible. Since you’re not tied to a proprietary.

Benefits Of Using Open Source Software Oss

Open source software has slowly but surely infiltrated the enterprise space, where comfort levels with the technology have grown to the point where many large-scale IT organisations rely on the likes of Linux, Hadoop, Kubernetes and TensorFlow.

List of Pros of Open Source Software 1. Good for Businesses. Software experts who are supporters of open source software posit. Easy to Download. Supporters of open source software say that it has helped users. Innovation Central. With the freedom to modify and edit an open source. Open Source = High Software Quality. With Enterprise Open Source software, users are provided with solutions that offer a variety of benefits: high-quality source code, stability, high performance, and a high level of security. Global communities ensure further development and promote a high level of innovation.

According to Red Hat's State of Enterprise Open Source survey, published in April 2019, 99 percent of IT leaders believe that open source software is at least 'somewhat important' to their enterprise IT strategy. Even back in 2016, in its Hype Cycle for Open-Source Software, analyst firm Gartner found that '95 percent of mainstream IT organisations leverage nontrivial open-source software assets within their mission-critical IT portfolios - whether they know it or not.'

This has proved itself out in the adoption of open source from propriety enterprise software vendors, including Microsoft, which was long embroiled in a war of words against open source, with former CEO Steve Ballmer once calling Linux a 'cancer'. Microsoft now counts itself as the world's biggest open source contributor, with IBM and SAP also breaking into the top ten, and in 2018 paid $7.5 billion to acquire one of the original exponents for open source software, GitHub, and its vast code repository.

Diego Lo Giudice, vice president principal analyst at Forrester, says that the attitude to open source at the world's biggest enterprises has 'totally changed even at executive level,' to the point that 'using and consuming open source in their internal IT is no longer a threat to CIOs and executives.'

As outlined in his influential essay on the topic, Why Open Source (which itself draws from David Wheeler's seminal paper, Why Open Source Software), Ben Balter states: 'Open source isn’t a fad, or a bunch of hippies out in California passing around tie-dye laptops like they would illicit substances. Open source is how modern organisations, and increasingly more traditional organisations build software.'

Read next: Open source technology trends 2019

Here are 10 of the biggest advantages to adopting open source software within the enterprise.

The open source model has radically transformed the information technology space by opening the playing field for software development and innovation. By leveraging open source software, developers can have comprehensive access to the code, regardless of whether or not they work for the enterprise that releases the software.

Advantages Of Open Source Software Slideshare

As open source software continues to cause disruption across different industries by driving device, consumer, and user experiences, it only makes perfect business sense to adopt the open source model. By making open source the foundation of a business, an organization can encourage innovation, simplify workflows, and improve business profitability and growth.

SourceForge recently spoke with Bill Hoffman, the Chief Technical Officer at Kitware, to discuss the benefits and the challenges of adopting the open source model. Hoffman also highlights the strategies that enterprises must implement to manage open source risks and shares how Kitware’s open source software solutions help users customize and simplify operational workflows and enhance business efficiency.

Q: Please share with our readers a brief overview of Kitware. When was the company established, and what are some of the industries you serve?

Bill Hoffman, the Chief Technical Officer at Kitware

A: Kitware was established in 1998, five years after the publication of The Visualization Toolkit: An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics. Will Schroeder and Ken Martin wrote the book and the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) software with a colleague from GE Corporate R&D. As the software gained traction, Will, Ken, Lisa Avila, Charles Law, and I started Kitware. We all worked at GE and all believed in the power of open science.

Companies in the oil and gas industry and the medical industry were among the first to back VTK. As we continued to develop the software, we worked on additional platforms like CMake, ParaView, and the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit. These platforms helped us reach new industries.

Today, we continue to work in medical computing and high-performance computing and visualization (a.k.a scientific computing), but we also work in computer vision, data and analytics, and software process management.

Q: Who are some of Kitware’s current customers? And what problems do you seek to solve?

A: Our current customers and collaborators include national laboratories, supercomputing centers, government agencies, and organizations in fields like banking, mining, and the automotive industry. We help them solve different problems from “How can we use open source software to better our prototype?” to “How can we model data in new ways?” to “How can we improve our software infrastructure?”

Q: Open source software (OSS) solutions are virtually everywhere these days. What are your thoughts on the way the open source market is growing?

A: I think OSS is found everywhere today, from cars and spacecraft through to the infrastructure of the Internet and (quite likely) your coffee machine. Software has become increasingly complex, and the days of one company creating a solution from the ground up and owning it are over. The trick is in the business model. At Kitware, we are funded by scientific research, and our product is our incredibly talented team. Software as a service over the Internet built on OSS is another interesting direction for companies to take with OSS business models. In summary, I think OSS is here to stay and will continue to grow.

Q: How does Kitware keep up with what OSS developers are doing? How has the open source approach benefited the company?

A: Through the open source approach, we have worked with many different customers and collaborators, writing new code, adding code from our platforms to other systems or fitting existing software to new needs. The open source approach has also enabled our team members to design and steer their own projects. We have team members with a passion for data and analytics. They grew projects such as the Resonant platform, which spurred the formation of our data and analytics team.

Q: Kitware develops, maintains, and supports a wide array of toolkits and applications that use permissive open source licenses. Can you please give us three of your best open source platforms that help businesses customize workflows and improve operational efficiency.

A: Our most widely used platform is CMake. It is becoming recognized as the C++ industry standard for building cross-platform libraries. We help companies move from home-grown build systems to CMake-based systems that are complete with advanced continuous integration testing with CTest and CDash.

Another one of our most popular platforms is ParaView. It comes in several flavors: one for the desktop, one for supercomputers, one for the web, one for VR and one for in situ computing, to offer some examples. ParaView Catalyst is the flavor for in situ simulation. It allows researchers to see lengthy (think multi-day) simulations as they run. This provides for early termination and avoids the waste of compute hours.

Part of the core of ParaView is VTK. It is our longest-running platform. With over 700 algorithms that can be used to create new applications, there is no shortage of options for customization.

Q: What are some of the most notable changes in open source software development in recent years? And what challenges did these bring to developers today?

A: I think the development of cloud computing and its ubiquity have had a huge impact on OSS development. On the C++ side of things, the development of the Clang compiler has provided an extendable C++ parser, enabling the development of very interesting analysis tools. The hardest thing for developers is keeping up with the rapid pace of innovation.

Q: What makes Kitware’s products stand out from other open source platforms in the market?

A: What makes our products stand out is our team members who develop them. We are not just software developers. We are researchers with degrees in physics, aerospace engineering and chemistry. What’s more, our software gets the benefit of our entire organization. Members of our high-performance computing and visualization team, for example, contribute to CMake. We also use the software we develop. VTK renders data in ParaView, and we test both platforms with CMake.

Q: While open source software provides significant benefits to development teams, it also poses a potential risk to enterprise security. What are some of the most common types of OSS security issues and/or vulnerabilities that development teams should pay attention to or be aware of? And how can development teams effectively manage the risks associated with using OSS components in their applications?

A: I would counter that statement: OSS actually enhances security in many cases. There are more eyes on the code, and bugs are found quicker. Security by obscurity only gives an illusion of security. The most important things for developers to do are updating software regularly and following good coding practices.

Q: Ignoring or missing OSS vulnerabilities can have a great impact not only on a development team’s project but also on the business as a whole. What practices and measures should teams take to effectively manage open source risks?

A: One thing teams can do is to use continuous integration (CI) to automatically assess code when changes are made. In particular, it is important to look for issues in code coverage, bugs, complications due to memory leak and violations in style and interface use. At Kitware, we use CMake to test our software and CDash to see what the tests reveal. As a bonus, CMake and CDash can be executed with cloud services for CI.

Q: Looking ahead, what emerging trends, strategies, and/or technologies do you think will shape the open source community in the coming year? How is Kitware addressing these?

A: Machine learning and GPU usage are going to continue to grow. We have worked on integrating related technologies into our platforms, when they are applicable. For example, NVIDIA funded the development of native CUDA support in CMake builds in the past year. We will continue to integrate technologies related to machine learning and GPU usage into our platforms, and we will look for partners and agencies that will help to advance our platforms accordingly.

Web-based applications and platforms will also continue to grow, and we will work hard to host our technologies on the web. The National Institutes of Health funded the development of vtk.js, a JavaScript version of our popular VTK platform. We will continue to broaden our footprint in web technologies.

About Kitware

Kitware is a software development, research, and consulting company that specializes in data analytics, computer vision, high-performance computing, software process, and more. Established in 1998, Kitware aims to help advance the frontiers of understanding by creating innovative open source software solutions and combining them into research, processes, and products. Kitware has over 150 employees and offices in Arlington, VA; Clifton Park, NY; Santa Fe, NM; Carrboro, NC; and Lyon, France.