Consumer Motivations
Main Author: Jeff West
Contents
Links to Papers Regarding Consumer Motivations
[1] http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,49312,00.html
[2] http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/4990/1/
[3] http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,1419629,00.asp
[4] http://www.nwfusion.com/ee2/2003/1110qa.html
[5] http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/a/antitrust.shtml
[6] http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/11/27/021127hnerniball.html?s=IDGNS
[7] http://kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=71
[8] http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/159
[9] http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/fuzz-revisited.pdf
[11] http://web.archive.org/web/20011211235539/www.syscontrol.ch/e/news/Serversoftware.html
Interesting Quotes on Consumer Motivations
"We jumped on Linux because it had the flexibility to customize to our needs." -Huffman (Conoco), http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,49312,00.html
Discussion on Consumer Motivations
Jesse Ruderman: When I have a choice between an open-source Windows program and a closed-source Windows program, I usually choose the open-source program because it is less likely to come with spyware. Sad but true.
Draft of Consumer Motivation Mini-Paper by Jeff West
Consumer Motivation
We now shift the focus of our brief to the consumer.motivations for using open source software as an alternative to closed source software. What causes individuals and public and private organizations to adopt open source software even though closed source software is usually more widely advertised and accepted? There are four major reasons that tend to come up as you research who the consumers are: cost, flexibility, ideology, and reliability.
Cost
When the topic of open source software is brought up, many people falsely assume that open source software is free. Open source software, while free to install, is not free to maintain. There are still rather important costs for support and maintenance that must be considered if one chooses to use an open source solution. However, for many applications the costs associated with open source software is far less than the cost of using closed source software. It is for this reason that many consumers choose to use open source solutions.
In 2000, Conoco decided to use Linux as an operating system for a supercomputer that analyzes seismic data that they accumulate while looking for oil and gas [1]. Conoco determined that they would save a lot of money by going with a Linux-based system over a closed-source software solution. Dr. Alan Huffman, manager of the company’s Seismic Imaging Technology Center, claims that the Linux-based system costs one-tenth as much as they otherwise might have spent.
Boscov, a department store company, is another business which is choosing to go with Linux. Boscov has decided to gradually migrate from Windows and DOS platforms to Linux systems so that it doesn’t cause a major interuption, but eventually would like to be using Linux on most of its systems [2]. The chain decided that it could more efficiently use its servers and IT staff by using Linux on their machines instead of closed source alternatives. In addition, Boscov has already saved about $5,000 by not having to license the software they use to communicate with Visa and Discover.
Harris Interactive Inc. had to make a decision between using Unix or using Linux for data-tabulation applications. According to their CIO Peter Milla, “It was a real no-brainer for us,” he says. “It's a $20,000 investment in a tier-one [Compaq] box, which allowed us to increase our throughput and avoid a $100,000 investment in an H-P Unix box. Like most companies, we have a lot of Intel-based expertise on staff, and this lets us leverage that.” [3]
These are only a few of the numerous companies that have found that they could save money on IT costs and product licensing if they went with open source software instead of going with closed source software. The greatest cost savings are in licensing and the ability to leverage IT solutions from outside sources. Because the tradeoff cost of support for the open source software is not necessarily any higher than the cost of the same support with purchased software, the overall cost is usually far less when open source software can be used as an alternative to licensed software.
Flexibility
While it’s important for software to be low-cost, it is also important that it be flexible enough to meet whatever needs you have. Some companies require more specialized software than can be found on the traditional closed-source market due to custom hardware or unique business practices.
Conoco manager Dr. Alan Huffman, whose project is mentioned above, said that “We jumped on Linux because it had the flexibility to customize to our needs.” Conoco needed to rework its software to work with special hardware that they created. This made Linux an attractive solution because the open source allows for companies to rework the software for their own needs.
Travelocity chose to move its website to a Linux/Java platform in large part due to CTO Barry Vandevier [4]. Barry is passionate about open source soultions and especially likes that they provide flexibility which can decrease time to market due to a collaborative creation process and an ability to speak with other people who have had experience with the software to see what solutions they have used for similar problems.
Not only is there flexibility in how you re-engineer software that has been created, there is also flexibility in what company you choose to acquire software from. Because the source code is open, many companies may be providing essentially the same product. However, the product may be slightly reconfigured or come with a different support package that more closely fits your needs. In addition, it is usually not hard to switch between versions of the software if you find that one company’s product or support is not meeting your needs. This will not be the case with clsoed source software, which will almost always be provided by only one company.
It is far easier for copmanies to modify software to meet their own needs when they have access to the source code. Many companies require software that is too specific to find on the closed source market, so the flexibility of open source mixed with a small number of capable programmers is a much better alternative than creating the necessary software from scratch with a much larger number of developers.
Ideology
Some people and businesses absolutely hate the idea of purchasing software, thinking that software is something that should be free to the world and thus choose to use open source software instead. This mindset can clearly be seen in movies such as Antitrust [5] (a “not-about-Microsoft” movie about Microsoft’s monopoly practices), where the main character’s friends throw out quotes like “Human knowledge belongs to the world.”
Of course, many people who fit into this category may just have a grudge with Microsoft. One such company may be the guitar string manufacturer Ernie Ball, whose CEO claims to have left Microsoft behind for Linux because it is unhappy with Microsoft’s licensing policies [6]. Ernie Ball was turned into and convicted by the Business Software Alliance in the year 2000 for not being able to prove that it had licenses for many of its software products.
In a petition written at Ohio State University in March of 2002, members of the Ohio State University Open Source Club were upset about a proprietary Linux tool being included in documentation in an official Linux release [7]. In the petition they state “We, the undersigned members and officers of the Open Source Club at the Ohio State University, are unhappy with the advocacy of the proprietary BitKeeper software for use in maintaining the Linux kernel. The Linux kernel is an important symbol of Open Source and Free Software for many people, and a project in which many thousands have participated in active development. It is fine if some kernel developers choose to use BitKeeper on their own machines, but officially endorsing proprietary software as the means of working on the kernel is a large step backwards for Linux, and for the Open Source and Free Software communities.”
It’s worth noting, however, that Linus Trovalds has been quoted as saying “Quite frankly, I don't want people using Linux for ideological reasons. I think ideology sucks. This world would be a much better place if people had less ideology, and a whole lot more ‘I do this because it's FUN and because others might find it useful, not because I got religion’.” [8]
Nonetheless, there are many people who prefer open source for no other reason than that they do not feel that the closed source model is a good one. Many people are concerned that software is being used in such a capitalist way, believing that software belongs to the world and not to the companies responbile for its creation.
Reliability
The final reason that consumers choose open source software that we will discuss is the increased reliability that many open source projects boast. The main reason that open source software is thought to have this characteristic is that the source code is usually read, understood, edited, and peer reviwed by a much larger audience than the closed source competition.
In “Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of UNIX Utilities and Services,” the authors found that utilities that they tested on commercial versions of UNIX had faiulre rates of 15-43% [9]. Meanwhile, Linux had a lower 9% failure rate and GNU utilities had only a 6% failure rate.
Another study done by ZDNet pitted Caldera Systems OpenLinux, Red Hat Linux, and Windows NT Server 4.0 against each other by setting up network servers on equivalent hardware [10]. After 10 months, equivalent network requests to all three servers revealed interesting results: the machine configured with Windows NT crashed an average of once every six months; neither Linux configured server went down a single time in the entire 10 months!
A 1999-2000 study compared the open source Apache web server software with Microsoft’s closed source Internet Information Services (IIS) web server software software by trying to access 100 of the most popular Swiss websites from 4 different locations every 5 minutes for 3 months [11]. The study found that websites which were run off of Microsoft’s ISS software had twice as much downtime as the websites which were run off of Apache.
The fact of the matter is that most open-source code is viewed by far more programmers and therefore has a much better chance of having its bugs and holes discovered and solutions designed for the next release. Numerous studies have been able to validate this result and prove that open source software tends to be more reliable and have less downtime than its closed source substitutes.
