I have been a developer for a number of years (yes, it’s a large-ish number) and I’ve worked on teams that have developed software on commercial platforms, on teams that have used a mixture of open source and commercial components, and on teams that have used primarily open source. Overall, I’ve developed (no pun intended) a preference for using open source tools and components whenever it’s feasible.  Here are some of the reasons why I prefer to develop with open source code:

As a COO, and former CFO, I’ve been in charge of my fair share of commercial and open source software projects over the years.  A couple of the projects I was directly in charge of the design of features, while others I held responsibility to sign off and approve at a high level.   Some projects were minor, while others involved full-scale customizations between an accounting application and a CRM application, with a front-end web interface.  Although the custom implementation worked great, and if I might say were pretty ingenious, there were definitely some valuable lessons I’ve learned over the years the hard way, that can be valuable to others in the same situation.

What are your options?

In determining your configuration you must evaluate the resources at hand.  This section will discuss possible options for your resources, without actually taking your resources into consideration. The next section will make suggestions as to which configurations your company may leverage depending on the resources available.

This post is part 1 of a 3 part blog series that will look at leveraging Apache Tomcat clustering, in order to increase your system’s availability.

When most people think "open source database," the first name that comes to mind is MySQL. This relational database management system (RDBMS) has been around for 17 years, and in that time it has become intimately associated with the open source ecosystem, notably as a component of the LAMP stack used to build solid web platforms - the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP. But MySQL also serves as the back end for prominent projects such as WordPress and MythTV, and it's used by enterprise customers such as Facebook, Sears, and BBC News.

Yesterday we had the pleasure of attending the “Meet Windows Azure” launch party, along with a number of other Azure partners in San Francisco.   

Open source is all about choice. Over the years, OpenLogic has grown and thrived in part because our mission is centered around giving that choice to corporations —the flexibility to choose the best open-source tools for any job, as well as the support they need to confidently deploy and maintain open source across the network.

Licensing Often Sets Expectations

The True Cost of Free

Evaluating Needs vs. Wants

• Software is software: Companies that view open source support as a need do so because they treat all software the same regardless of the source. Whether open source, commercial, or proprietary, these companies have a policy that all software must be approved for use and supported. These companies also strive to ensure compliance with open source licenses.

• Low risk profile: Should a serious issue arise, these companies want to ensure that help is just a phone call away. Support can certainly be purchased on short notice, but what happens if a critical system breaks after hours or on a holiday? Even if a problem happens on a Monday morning, can management and procurement approve the purchase quickly enough to avoid serious repercussions? Companies with a low risk profile address these questions by securing open source support ahead of time.

• Access to the community: Most open source support providers employ or contract with members of the open source community, so a commercial support contract can connect a company to the community that actually develops the software. This can be critical when it comes to fixing bugs, suggesting new features, or committing your own changes and enhancements back to the open source project.

Summary

• Stack flexibility: OpenLogic will provide pre-configured stacks including LAMP, Nginx, Tomcat, Node.js and Rails and custom stacks using OpenLogic CloudSwing. CloudSwing enables users to quickly and easily deploy either pre-built or customized technology stacks in the Amazon cloud and track associated costs of the deployment.

• Enterprise grade security: All stacks pre-configured with security best practices.

• Enterprise support: Commercial grade support including business hour or 24x7 with response time commitments as low as one hour.

• Flexible pricing: For a flat monthly fee, OpenLogic customers get unlimited support incidents on all of the components in the open source stack. There are also free options for customers who do not need support.