There is only one buzzword which has astonished the overall
information technology industry and that is “OPEN SOURCE”. Its been quite
sometime that we are living under open source technologies and deploying them
in our daily lives but what has triggered such a growth. We will find out in
this post.
People do think that open source is used extensively because
its free. Well this is one of the reason but its not the only one. There are
several ones.
If we look at the paid softwares like windows, it’s a good
software because its used by common man since its launch, also its very simple
but when compared to Linux we will find that it has lots of features which are
not even included in the paid ones. And Linux is FREE.
But I will not point out the tug-of-war going on between
these systems (close and open) but how you can grow your business by utilizing
them.
- When it comes to
website design, wordpress is considered as the most deployed CMS (Content
management system). Its been installed on millions of websites and is the #1
growing open source CMS. Its been developed in PHP
- If you are heading
for ecommerce do go for Magento, Opencart etc. because you can start your store
for free and within minutes. Its been developed in PHP too.
- If you are looking
for some CRM solution, then go for Sugar CRM.
- Open Office is a
good alternative and Linux OS too.
But when it comes to web totally we do see a lot of varies
and a big question. How secure is the open source software, available under
free GNU license. Its been found that since the code is open, so hacker can
point out the security vulnerabilities and may attack a website thereby leading
to a complete business shutdown.
One of the main reason professional have found that its not
the security vulnerability or the exposure of code. Its mainly due to 3rd
party integration which most of the developers do just to enhance their
application further. Instances of hacking a website is mainly caused because of
free plugins and extensions on unreliable networks.
So if you are thinking to start a website and want to keep
your costs low, open source is the best way but before hiring any company or
individual you should make one thing clear. They must provide technical support
for the website continuously for a long time because it happens that companies
develop the system and signs off. So if something happens in the future you
cannot know as what happened.
I remember with one of our client approaching us to fix the
wordpress update. The problem was that the wordpress
forced to upgrade the current version but the old plugins may become
un-functional because their updated or compatible versions were not available.
This is indeed another problem with fixed CMS, although there is a crack
towards it and you can manually enhance the old plugins or even replace with
the latest one of a different origin.
No matter what but open source technologies are here to
stay. I cannot say about the desktop but on server or web the open source
technologies reigns.
