'Operating software should be opensourced'

Software that runs a computer should be freely downloadable without any barriers, a top IT company chief argued yesterday.

Scott McNealy, the chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems said opensourcing of software can reduce the instances of virus attacks, ameliorate interoperability and reduce exit costs for companies that want to migrate to new products.

"In case of openly available 'source code', the exit cost for companies wanting to migrate are minimal," McNealy said.

Sun Microsystems is a multinational vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services. It rivals with companies like Microsoft which sell operating systems for a price and regularly update their products asking their customer to switch over to their recent launches. Products, including operating systems and softwares that run a computer can be downloaded free from Sun Microsystems' website.

McNealy said software companies will particularly benefit by using open source products. "Technology has the shelf life of a banana," he said adding that companies can easily migrate to other products. McNealy said the Middle East lags behind in adopting the open-source technologies. "Just six of the 268 of the world's government supported open-source initiatives come from the region. About 75 per cent of the technology in use in e-governance setups in the region is redundant," he said. A senior official from Dell, a computer hardware company, told Emirates Business that the constant updating of e-governance setups in the region has been difficult. "It has more to do with new technologies arriving in the market than us not trying to keep pace with it," he said.

Open-sourcing is the act of releasing previously proprietary software under a free software license. Notable software packages which have been opensourced include Netscape Navigator, StarOffice, Global File System and SAP DB.

Companies dealing in open-source software have an unconventional model of generating revenue. They deal commercially in higher end products than in software platforms.

Significant demand for standalone open-source software will see the market grow at a rate of 26 per cent a year to reach $5.8 billion (Dh21.3bn) by 2011, according to a recent estimate by International Data Corporation, a market research and analysis firm. IDC recently announced that the worldwide revenue from standalone opensource software reached $1.8bn in 2006.

McNealy said opensourced operating systems and computer languages are remarkably less vulnerable to virus and other online attacks. Availability of opensourced software has also particularly helped startup companies.