Open Source and Open Standards in E-commerce - Assignment Example

Open Source and Open Standards in Ecommerce Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 3 2- Overview 4 3- Open source products 5 4- Open Source vs. Commercial Software 6 5- Current market for open source products 7 Casual Support: In this kind of open source system services the system is offered at no cost however the casual support is offered in case of any system problems. In addition, this causal support services are charged hourly or daily rates. These services are obtainable on a casual basis and are for short time period in case of problem (GBdirect Ltd, n.d). The main facilities offered by these services are (Feller & Fitzgerald, 2002): 8 Bespoke Support: In these services the programmers are offered on a case by case basis. They could comprise some, or entire of the open source support services presented in pervious headings. These types of services are offered to cover against system problem, help, mitigation and training. The revenue generation is offered through presenting some contractual aspects (GBdirect Ltd, n.d). 8 6- Open source products and new business model 8 7- Open source at corporate 10 8- Open source standards and open source 12 Availability 12 Maximize End-User Choice 12 No Royalty 12 No Discrimination 12 Extension or Subset 12 Predatory Practices 12 Why we need to asses open standards regarding the open source technology? 12 Saint-Andre (2009) has answered the question and stated that open source technology and products often rely on open protocols standards, for example Mozilla with HTML/JavaScript/CSS, Apache with HTTP, Sendmail with SMTP. In this scenario we can assess that the proprietary products and systems are also doing the similar job. In this regard the open source technology developers need to confirm the platforms efficiency to offer the user a better and enhanced experience. Therefore open source developer need to fulfill all the quality standards of the open standards. However small development firms and software houses are restricted to construct a closed implementations as well as consequently they are not fixed to limitations of licenses for example GPL (Saint-Andre, 2009). Saint-Andre (2009) has stated that a number of people thought that, the W3C or IETF supports a format or protocol; it consequently turned out to be a standard. However standardization is not an issue of authorization; however it is a concern of recognition in the marketplace. Not the entire of standards are open (for instance, PowerPoint or MS Word). Despite the fact that, when formats as well as protocols are coming under the open standards, then open standards applications are technically strong typically be liable to be established through the marketplace like a standard. Certainly, a certain application or protocol turns out to be not simply a standard however the leading marketplace maker. For instance, Apache is the leading web server. It new protocol HTTPng was unsuccessful to grab sufficient market because it was not fully supporting Apache community. A powerful open source "anchor" facilitates to guarantee the openness of the fundamental technology (Saint-Andre, 2009). Furthermore, in case of development of open source products we need to confirm the contemporary standards of the open standards. Dalziel (2003) has outlined some of them regarding the fulfillment of the open standards requirement those need to be assured the following principles. However, if an allocated open standard does not meet up these regarding the open source system development then it will be discriminating against developers of open source technology (Dalziel, 2003): 12 9- Open source products issues 14 10- Conclusion 16 The modern and up-to-date emerging open source technology has a solid business foundation. In addition, this technology offers free of cost and high quality systems and applications to deal with the corporate and business problems and issues. However, there are some negative aspects also associated with the open source technology that make the adoption of open source technology harder or risky. In this research I have outlined some of the main technological aspects of open source products. This research has offered an insight into the different advantages and issues about open source technology. I hope this research offer a deep insight into overall areas of open source technology. 16 11- References 17 1- Abstract Nowadays business on internet (electronic commerce) is very common and most of the organizations are establishing their businesses on internet. However, ecommerce consists of the selling and buying of services or products over web based environment. The extent of business performed electronically has emerged extremely since the expansion of Internet. In addition, a broad range of commerce is found on web nowadays that involves drawing and spurring, web based funds transfer, electronic SCM (supply chain management), online transaction processing, Internet marketing, inventory management systems, electronic data interchange, as well as automated data collection systems. Furthermore, contemporary ecommerce normally employs the World Wide Web at least at various points in the dealings lifecycle, though it can include a huge variety of technologies like that e-mail as well. Open source is a new emerging area of business that is a certification mark issued by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). We can observe that the concept of open sourcing is mostly employed toward the software development and distribution. In addition, mostly open source technique is used by those software professionals who are interested in freely development and sharing of their software products for the incorporation of possibly improvement or business. Furthermore, an open source product needs to confirm the open source defecation issued by the open source initiative to conform open source definition (TechTarget, 2009). This paper presents the detailed analysis of the open source technique and open source products. In addition, it will critically evaluate the current market for open source products in the commercial sector, and in public administration. This paper will also outline some of the organizations those have adopted the open source products. The possible enhancements or problem analysis will also be the part of this research regarding the open source technology analysis. However, this research mainly concentrates on the importance of the different factors in the open source and opens source standards environments. 2- Overview According to Laurent (2004), the open source presents practices in development and production that encourage the easy and priceless access to the product source materials. In addition, normally the main product sharing material is source code. However, before the emergence of the term ‘open source’ system the producers and developers of the system employed a range of phrases to explain the idea of open source. But, after the emergence of World Wide Web and computer network system they felt the need for high retooling and source code sharing. The emergence of open source products paradigm and the open source code facilitated a self-enhancing range of communication paths, production models, and interactive communities. Therefore, novel "open source software" was came out to illustrate the new environment of licensing, copyright, consumer issues and domain (Laurent, 2004). As Laurent (2004) stated that open source model comprises the perception of synchronized yet diverse agendas as well as differing technique in production of products. These different techniques and development strategies are more different as compared to centralized models of development or classically utilized in commercial software business. A major standard and development practice of open-source products is based on the exchanging and cooperation based working by the source-material or developed product that is obtainable at no charges to the public. Furthermore, this scheme of open sourcing is more and more being applied or used in other areas of life and business (Laurent, 2004). To explain the open source products in a better way (TechTarget, 2009): The source codes have to be made obtainable (therefore that the receiver of source party will be capable to enhance or modify it) (TechTarget, 2009). The software under the open source development being distributed has to be redistributed to someone else with no limitation (TechTarget, 2009). The license is able to needed to enhanced versions of the open source software to hold a diverse version or name from the real software (TechTarget, 2009). 3- Open source products The business of the open source products is purely based on the community of independent contributors. In addition, the development and distribution of the open source products is purely dependent on the volunteers and people whom are working through some technology corporations. Actually, the majority of the well-liked open source products are developed by the workers of the commercial entity majority linked with (e.g., Geronimo application server by IBM, Fedora Linux by Red Hat, LogicBlaze by Iona/Progress). There are a range of open source products based on the more independent than the standard from the corporations those are employed their product’s project code intended for better revenue production (WikiInvest, 2009). However, latest versions are normally released a great deal more normally as compared to closed-source software. In addition, huge system development corporations are developing closed-source systems those are normally updated products spending huge cost and efforts in this regard. In contrast the open source software has been taken as better option because of building better quality software those developed in a faster way with lower cost (WikiInvest, 2009). The technology and system developers who support the open source system development technology concept believe that through permitting someone who is interested in transforming or updating the source code, the resultant system/application will be more functional as well as error-free over the operating, handling and long term use (HowStuffWorks, Inc., 2010). Feller & Fitzgerald (2002) stated that a software application that has the open source designation needs to meet the following criteria (Feller & Fitzgerald, 2002): The application/program/software has to be freely distributed Open source system can be a part of the package that is sold like that Red Hat has having lot of open source applications inside Source code has to be incorporated Someone should be permitted to change the source code Customized editions can be redistributed The open source license will be implemented on open source systems and will require no prohibiting regarding change, development, castigation and distribution. 4- Open Source vs. Commercial Software Woods (2005) states that main significant dissimilarity among software developed by the open source developers and commercial software put up for sale by vendors is that open source products is available through the licenses that makes certain that the source code is obtainable to everybody to change, inspect, download, as well as investigate as they desire. Furthermore, this is the vital aspects of open source systems that source code or language through which software is developed, is obtainable (Woods, 2005; Schryen & Kadura, 2009). 5- Current market for open source products In this section I will outline some of the main current markets for the open source products (Feller & Fitzgerald, 2002) & (GBdirect Ltd, n.d): Annual support and maintenance Casual support Bespoke support Annual support and maintenance: In this type of open source business contract the products are offer free of cost however the charges of annual support and maintenance services have to be taken under the contract. Here we have main services areas of following aspects (GBdirect Ltd, n.d): Support and fixing services Software extension and customization services Constant Helpdesk support Diagnosis and Investigation of problems Offering scheduled maintenance like patching, upgrades, security assurance and bug-fixing. Offering cover against holiday and sickness Casual Support: In this kind of open source system services the system is offered at no cost however the casual support is offered in case of any system problems. In addition, this causal support services are charged hourly or daily rates. These services are obtainable on a casual basis and are for short time period in case of problem (GBdirect Ltd, n.d). The main facilities offered by these services are (Feller & Fitzgerald, 2002): Helpdesk support through telephone, fax or email Fast fixes as well as workarounds to quick problems Diagnosis and examination Remedial work Services for system extension and customization Bespoke Support: In these services the programmers are offered on a case by case basis. They could comprise some, or entire of the open source support services presented in pervious headings. These types of services are offered to cover against system problem, help, mitigation and training. The revenue generation is offered through presenting some contractual aspects (GBdirect Ltd, n.d). 6- Open source products and new business model Laurent (2004) outlines that a number of corporations have been developed an open source business model, where they provide their software exclusive of charge or extremely at low cost. In addition, some of these corporations reasonably obtain their revenues by offering the services of training and support. Furthermore, this new open source business model is actually not unusual than the majority of other commercial software businesses those approximately continually sell maintenance, subscription and training service. However, these services are offered besides selling of the system through the early right to utilize license. Actually, the majority of the long-time contributors in the software marketplace take half of revenue from these types of software services (Laurent, 2004). According to Laurent (2004), a lot of corporations are making use of the so-called open source business model. This adoption of technology is in the shape of tiered approach to respective corporate’ product those presenting and releasing a totally free of charge community edition of their systems/products/software. However, in this scenario the area of revenue generation is charging a license cost for their enterprise edition. The intended enterprise edition is frequently based on their community edition however not comprising extra tools/features/facilities or is more highly scalable. This is also a new open source market tactic that is different from the closed-source software (Laurent, 2004). Feller & Fitzgerald (2002) stated that another most popluer type of business in scenario of open source products is carried out by the popular open source corporation. For example Red Hat is a self-governing public corporation. On the other hand, Source-Forge is a well-known online hosting site. In this scenario the publisher of open source corporate websites are having business with system development firms those are using the code repository of the open source websites. In this way the online business open source systems generate revenue. This is another new type of revenue generation model that is employed by these online code repositories and this revenue model is completely different from the sale of any open source systems. There is a lot of business associated with such type of business and having some business contracts with these online open source code repositories like that LogicBlaze, Gluecode, Suse, MySQL, Zimbra, Xensource, etc. Furthermore, these types of open source revenue generation businesses are the conqueror of open source business from the perspective of development, investment, sales and time and dealing. Therefore, these businesses are having a main edge of no additional problems regarding R&D expense and developments (Feller & Fitzgerald, 2002; Munga et al., 2009). 7- Open source at corporate This section will outline some of the main organizations regarding the implementation of the new open source technology. Here I will outline open source technology regarding its efficiency about the corporate sectors. First of all, Yahoo is the biggest online commutation network that offers better facilities regarding web based mailing and data transfer. In addition, more than 600 million, even more visit this site every month, Yahoo needs to handle such a huge number of online visitors. In addition, to facilitate and uphold the constant availability and efficiency of web based business Yahoo makes use of the traffic server. In this scenario, to deal with these issues, Yahoo has acquired the open source software from Inktomi, to maintain and support such huge web based traffic on Yahoo traffic server (Rao, 2009). In addition, the code of this open source traffic server software is available at Apache Software Foundation in the Incubator project (Rao, 2009). Furthermore, regarding the efficiency of this technology Yahoo has claimed that this technology will offer effective traffic management, authentication, session management, load balancing, configuration management and routing for huge and extensive load of the yahoo traffic server (Rao, 2009). Also, Yahoo has claimed that this open source technology has effectively offered the benefits to organizations. The main significance is claimed in this scenario is accessing cached online content. It is also outlined that open source system for the traffic server facilitates high speed responses to user requests intended for stored Yahoo web objects like that news, files, images or articles (Rao, 2009; Björgvinsson & Thorbergsson, 2007). Here another example of the open source technology implemention at Yahoo is adoption of the open source scripting language. According to Festa (2002), Yahoo has adopted the open source scripting language regaring the future page scripting of the Yahoo web. Furthermore, it claims that substantional cost saving would be possible through this initiative of the yahoo adminstration (Festa, 2002). According to the information-week the open source technology is presently foremost option for almost every business or organization. It is outlined that Linux open source operating system has deployed at a lot of the huge corporations. In this scenario we have an important example of ABN Amro Bank NV that has adopted open source technology regarding the enhanced corporate operations management and handling. According to the reports of the Information-Week have extensive development toward the open source technology (corbet, 2005). The fundamental reason of its adoption is the less cost and better support offered by the technology. On the other hand, in case of Linux open source operating system we have no danger of virus attacks and hacking (Laurent, 2004). In another article of information week Greenemeier (2005) discusses about the implementation of the open source technlogy at corporate sectors. In this senrio he stated that Walt Disney Co.s corporate has deployed the open-source Tomcat servlet engine. This open source application is implemented at the corporate web portal environment. This will also run at open source operating system Linux. This open source technology will facilitate the Walt Disney Co. regarding the effective management the web based communication and effective handling of the web based traffic. Furthermore, all these facilities will be obtainable at low cost with less annual expenditure regarding updates and patches (Greenemeier, 2005). 8- Open source standards and open source This section will present a detailed analysis of the open source standards and their relation to the open source products. An Open standard is simply not a specification. The standards at the back of open standards are a list of different aspects those we need to conform regarding the development of the any open source products. Below I have outlined some of the main aspects and standards regarding open standards (perens, 2009): Availability Maximize End-User Choice No Royalty No Discrimination Extension or Subset Predatory Practices Why we need to asses open standards regarding the open source technology? Saint-Andre (2009) has answered the question and stated that open source technology and products often rely on open protocols standards, for example Mozilla with HTML/JavaScript/CSS, Apache with HTTP, Sendmail with SMTP. In this scenario we can assess that the proprietary products and systems are also doing the similar job. In this regard the open source technology developers need to confirm the platforms efficiency to offer the user a better and enhanced experience. Therefore open source developer need to fulfill all the quality standards of the open standards. However small development firms and software houses are restricted to construct a closed implementations as well as consequently they are not fixed to limitations of licenses for example GPL (Saint-Andre, 2009). Saint-Andre (2009) has stated that a number of people thought that, the W3C or IETF supports a format or protocol; it consequently turned out to be a standard. However standardization is not an issue of authorization; however it is a concern of recognition in the marketplace. Not the entire of standards are open (for instance, PowerPoint or MS Word). Despite the fact that, when formats as well as protocols are coming under the open standards, then open standards applications are technically strong typically be liable to be established through the marketplace like a standard. Certainly, a certain application or protocol turns out to be not simply a standard however the leading marketplace maker. For instance, Apache is the leading web server. It new protocol HTTPng was unsuccessful to grab sufficient market because it was not fully supporting Apache community. A powerful open source "anchor" facilitates to guarantee the openness of the fundamental technology (Saint-Andre, 2009). Furthermore, in case of development of open source products we need to confirm the contemporary standards of the open standards. Dalziel (2003) has outlined some of them regarding the fulfillment of the open standards requirement those need to be assured the following principles. However, if an allocated open standard does not meet up these regarding the open source system development then it will be discriminating against developers of open source technology (Dalziel, 2003): Availability: The open standard regarding the open source system needs to be presented in a way that it could be publicly and freely obtainable beneath royalty-free conditions at realistic as well as non-discriminatory price. Patents: The entire patents those are necessary regarding the development of the standard have to; be approved under royalty-free conditions for open use, or be enclosed through a assurance of non-assertion when experienced through open source software No deliberate secrets: The customary standards need not to deny some aspects essential for interoperable accomplishment of any open source system. As faults are expected, the principle need to be defined to meet the standard and setting up defects recognized during product development. No OSR Incompatible Dependencies: development of the open source system on the basis of the open standard has to require some other technology that is not able to fulfill the criteria of this Requirement. No Agreements: there should be no restrictions planned for accomplishment of a license contract, grant, click-through, NDA or a number of other forms of paperwork to set up implementation as well as accomplishments of the standard for development of open source technology. 9- Open source products issues Wittow & Pearlman (2009) outlined that open-source products are more and more well-liked technologies those are developed and distributed to achieve less costly and liberal system implementation. In addition, the openly obtainable source code normally is offered without any cost, it is attractive to see to open source system intended for potentially considerable cost savings (Wittow & Pearlman, 2009). Furthermore, according to Wittow & Pearlman (2009), open source products are complex and some of the legal restrictions that can produce copyright as well as patent fulfillment concerns. In this scenario business operational structure greatly depend on customized business systems; in case of business system customization we can face some of the legal concerns (Wittow & Pearlman, 2009). In addition, have also various other concerns regarding the system handling and operating. For example Wailgum (2009) states that in 2004, the FDIC, Federal Reserve and other US central financial authoritarian agencies presented a lot of legal and strategic risks regarding utilization of open source technology. This happens due to availability of open code of the system, those can be assessable to any entity (Wailgum, 2009). Wittow & Pearlman (2009) stated that public corporation disclosure statements as well revealed some of critical issues regarding the open-source technology application. In addition, a lot of US public agencies have outlined some of critical issues in their annual reports. Also, some of the public corporations have outlined that utilization of open source technology has turned out to be a risk factor to their businesses. Some private corporations in US have observed valuation drop, or have observed acquisitions disappointment altogether, since as effect of open-source technology application (Wittow & Pearlman, 2009). Here we have some of the fundamental risks regarding the open source technology those are given below: (Feldstein, 2009): Security Risk: Feldstein (2009) outlined that some of the identity theft and security breaches cases are widespread confronts today those are making the overall business functions harder. Because, open source technology offers open access to source code that could lead to take a complete insight of system and identifying some security holes those can be used to hack the system (Feldstein, 2009; Schryen & Kadura, 2009). Support Risks According to Feldstein (2009), technical issues as well as other connected difficulties are expected while the utilization of open source technology. The open system customization and fixing these technical issues can lead to overall higher cost and problems (Feldstein, 2009). Training Risks Feldstein (2009) outlined that new open source technology offers less market experience that can lead to risk of unavailability of the proper system training. This all happend due to the novelty of the particular open soure technology (Feldstein, 2009). 10- Conclusion The modern and up-to-date emerging open source technology has a solid business foundation. In addition, this technology offers free of cost and high quality systems and applications to deal with the corporate and business problems and issues. However, there are some negative aspects also associated with the open source technology that make the adoption of open source technology harder or risky. In this research I have outlined some of the main technological aspects of open source products. This research has offered an insight into the different advantages and issues about open source technology. I hope this research offer a deep insight into overall areas of open source technology. 11- References Bjorgvinsson, T. & Thorbergsson, H., 2007. Software development for governmental use utilizing free and open source software. In ACM International Conference Proceeding Series; Vol. 232 Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Theory and practice of electronic governance. Macao, China , 2007. ACM New York, USA. Burger, A.K., 2006. The B2B Renaissance, Part 2: Solutions in a Global Economy. [Online] ECT News Network, Inc. Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/54069.html" [Accessed 21 January 2010]. corbet, 2005. Open Source Goes Corporate (InformationWeek). [Online] Eklektix, Inc. Available at: HYPERLINK "http://lwn.net/Articles/153095/" [Accessed 20 January 2010]. Dalziel, J., 2003. Open Standards Versus Open Source in E-Learning. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0340.pdf" [Accessed 21 January 2010]. Feldstein, M., 2009. Blackboard’s Response to Open Source: Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://mfeldstein.com/tl/blackboards-response-to-open-source-fear-uncertainty-doubt/" [Accessed 21 January 2010]. Feller, J. & Fitzgerald, B., 2002. Understanding Open Source Software development. New York: Addison-Wesley Professional. Festa, P., 2002. Yahoo shifts to open-source scripting. [Online] CBS Interactive. Available at: HYPERLINK "http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-963937.html" [Accessed 20 January 2010]. Gapinski, J., 2009. What Are the Different Types of Open Source Technology? [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-open-source-technology.htm" [Accessed 19 January 2010]. GBdirect Ltd, n.d. Types of Open Source Software Support. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://software-support.gbdirect.co.uk/open_source_support_types.html" [Accessed 18 January 2010]. Greenemeier, L., 2005. Open Source Goes Corporate. [Online] United Business Media LLC. Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=171200352" [Accessed 20 January 2010]. HowStuffWorks, Inc., 2010. What does open source mean? [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question435.htm" [Accessed 19 January 2010]. Laurent, A.M.S., 2004. Understanding open source & free software licensing. CA US: OReilly Media, Inc. Munga, N., Fogwill, T. & Williams, Q., 2009. The adoption of open source software in business models: a Red Hat and IBM case study. In ACM International Conference Proceeding Series Proceedings of the 2009 Annual Research Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists. Vanderbijlpark, Emfuleni, South Africa, 2009. ACM New York, USA. perens, 2009. Open Standards. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html" [Accessed 20 January 2010]. Rao, L., 2009. Yahoo Open Sources Traffic Server. [Online] TechCrunch Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/02/yahoo-open-sources-traffic-server/" [Accessed 20 January 2010]. Saint-Andre, P., 2009. Open Source and Open Standards. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/04/29/openstandardsopensource.html" [Accessed 21 January 2010]. Schryen, G. & Kadura, R., 2009. Open source vs. closed source software: towards measuring security. In Symposium on Applied Computing Proceedings of the 2009 ACM symposium on Applied Computing. Honolulu, Hawaii , 2009. ACM New York, USA. TechTarget, 2009. What is Open source? [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid39_gci212709,00.html" [Accessed 19 January 2010]. Wailgum, T., 2009. Wall Street Software Scandal: When Does Open Source Become Proprietary Code. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://advice.cio.com/thomas_wailgum/wall_street_software_scandal_when_does_open_source_become_proprietary_code" [Accessed 19 January 2010]. WikiInvest, 2009. http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Open_Source. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Open_Source" [Accessed 18 January 2010]. Wittow, M.H. & Pearlman, J.C., 2009. How Open-Source Software Can Affect A Companys Value. [Online] Available at: HYPERLINK "http://www.cio.com.au/article/330162/how_open-source_software_can_affect_company_value" [Accessed 20 January 2010]. Woods, D., 2005. What Is Open Source. [Online] OReilly Media, Inc. Available at: HYPERLINK "http://onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/09/15/what-is-opensource.html" [Accessed 19 January 2010]. Read More