Last week at OSBC, OpenLogic hosted a panel of open source end users on the topic of Risks and Rewards: How Enterprises are Adopting and Managing Open Source.  Stormy Peters moderated the session where enterprise visionaries shared advice on creating open source policies and managing open source risks.  Their universal advice is that enterprises should treat open source software just like proprietary software.  Here’s a taste of what they said.

Jon Stumpf, AIG: “What I think is most important is to just recognize open source as being no different than closed source technology coming in the door. It’s all about license, compliance and understanding where you can deploy technology. In dealing with the minor variations that open source brings, the majority of the processes you’re supposed to have will suit you well when bringing new technology in.” 

William Hurley, BMC: “Software is software is software. There is absolutely no difference in managing the proprietary use of software within your company than there is the open source. You have the same issues of scale, interoperability, licensing and so on and so forth.”

Tim Golden, Bank of America: “I don’t think we can emphasize enough: open source software is the same as proprietary software in almost every way except your relationship to the software. You can use almost every existing process that applies to software and some lifecycle management within any kind of a company.”

Now that idea may be anathema to some open source advocates, but it resonates with enterprises that we talk to at OpenLogic.  What we consistently hear is that companies need and want the same services for open source software that they get from proprietary software.  Hence the rise of open source companies – they bridge the gap between what open source is (flexible, free, high quality, functional software) and the additional services that enterprises want in order to deploy open source. (trusted source, support, updates, indemnification, tools). 

The panel members did acknowledge that there are some special issues that enterprises need to address with open source and that these need to be handled in your open source policy.  I’ll blog more on that topic in the days to come.