OSS is perceived to have a number of advantages, as discussed by several advocates of OSS and authors around the world. This section discusses the advantages of OSS.
Cost saving
One of the principle justifications for the existence of FOSS is the provision of the software and the code at no fee in order to allow companies and individuals to benefit from the software (Bretthauer, 2001, Williams, 2002). It has been reported that, as a result of using OSS many organisations have been able to achieve significant cost savings in technology expenditure to the tune of millions of dollars (Nagy, Yasssin, & Bhattacherjee, 2010; Dedrick & West, 2004).
Dedrick & West (2004), noted that an OSS platform frees companies from sizable annual fees for OS usage and upgrades. A study conducted Derrick & West (2004), noted that many companies opt to use OSS such as Linux as it results in both a software and a hardware cost advantage apart from the fact that the software can be downloaded for free. This is because Linux is platform independent and can run on any server allowing organisations to choose cheaper hardware.
Although there has been optimism regarding cost savings, the software licence is free but the software is not free to use because an organisation must have people to “maintain it and develop it and foster it” and all these things cost money (Dedrick & West, 2004).
Even though the initial cost of OSS is considerably lower than is the case for PS, organizations should also consider the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as an OSS solution might need to be customized to suit the needs of an organization (James & Belle, 2008). James & Belle (2008) argue that, the TCO for OSS is normally significantly lower than for PS although this is different for every case study. The TCO is determined by calculating all financial costs relating to the software that the organisation incurs during the life span of the project.
Security
Computer security goals include confidentiality, integrity and availability (Wheeler, 2001). Due to the fact that OSS is developed by a group of collaborating programmers who can quickly detect and fix bugs, it is believed to be more secure (Mtsweni & Biermann, 2008). According to
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them, OSS operating systems have been found to be more secure and less vulnerable to viruses when compared to their proprietary counterparts such as Microsoft Windows OS.
Not everyone believes that OSS provides better security because open source code exposes the source code to examination by everyone, both the attackers and defenders. This might give the attackers an upper hand (Wheeler, 2001). In his book Wheeler (2001), reports that there is a school of thought that argues that a system without publicly released source code is more secure because, since there is little information accessible for an attacker, it would be more difficult for an attacker to discover the vulnerabilities. An opposing argument is that attackers in general don't require source code, and if they want to use source code they can use disassemblers to re-create the source code of the product.
Customisation
There are occasions where the software requirements of an organisation cannot be adequately satisfied by an OSS product even though the software has options for configuration and parameterisation (Keßler & Alpar, 2009). The source code for OSS is made freely available giving organizations and individuals an opportunity to modify and customise the software to suit their own needs (Dedrick & West, 2004). The process of customisation needs to be well managed and planned in order to avoid configuration management challenges (Keßler & Alpar, 2009).
Reliability
Since the inception of OSS, the movement has attracted much “free” labour to the foundation to build open, transparent software systems (Heron, et al., 2013). This development approach is unique and it has resulted in numerous substantial open source projects becoming reliable, scalable technologies that have been used at all levels of the digital economy (Heron, et al., 2013).
OSS is used for everything from individual servers to the hardware that runs mission critical systems for multinational organisations (Heron, et al., 2013). It is also expected that since the software has many users, there are high chances of fault minimization, with the many small, but constant changes of the code by the OSS development community as many users can discover bugs (Đurković, et al., 2008). By providing the users with source code, they are empowered to improve the product (Krishnamurthy, 2003).
Quality
The OSS method of software development allows a potentially endless number of developers and testers to work on the program (Krishnamurthy, 2003). OSS is thoroughly tested because even a company willing to devote resources to product testing may not be able to accurately
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simulate all conditions under which it will be used (Krishnamurthy, 2003). OSS developers have been able to develop some high quality products, such as the Apache HTTP server, that have almost eliminated their proprietary counterparts because of the developers’ high talents and skills (Ågerfalk, et al., 2005).
Customer support from a community
According to Krishnamurthy (2003), users of OSS are likely to get support faster because there is an engaged community willing to respond to the user’s questions. He notes that PS companies on the other hand in most cases have a small customer service department as a cost cutting measure that is unable to respond to customer questions rapidly.
Escaping vendor lock-in
Competition is a paramount aspect in PS whereby vendor lock-in is one of the strategies that vendors use to reduce the bargaining power of customers and increase that of vendors in the post adoption period (Zhu & Zhou, 2012). Vendor lock-in is something that PS vendors achieve by frequently releasing software upgrades which they force customers to take thus making them increasingly dependent on vendor support (Zhu & Zhou, 2012). If customers do not take these software upgrades, they risk getting stranded with outdated systems. In the case of OSS, there is no forced upgrade, and the software is supported by an open community which is more than willing to support even legacy software (Zhu & Zhou, 2012). In African countries, companies like Microsoft have been able to achieve customer lock-in in both the public and in the private sector and liberation from this can most effectively be provided by OSS (Kamau & Namuye, 2012).
An empirical study conducted by Zhu & Zhou (2012), revealed that the lock-in strategy is too costly for the proprietary software provider when it competes with OSS as switching costs hurts rather than benefits the proprietary software provider. The reason for this is because OSS can credibly precommit its future price forcing the PS provider to change its pricing behaviour (Zhu
& Zhou, 2012). In their view the presence of a competing OSS solution therefore neutralizes the intended lock-in strategy because the intended victims have an alternative and in most cases they switch to the OSS solution.
Encouraging innovations
The OSS development model is known to encourage and increase innovations (Kotwani &
Kalyani, 2011). This opinion is shared by Agerfalk et al., (2005) who also observed that
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innovation was in the forefront in a vision of OSS as an enabler of increased research and development (R&D) in SMEs.
Increasing collaboration
A study conducted by Agerfalk et al., (2005), established that OSS allows for extensive collaboration not only between individual organisations, but also between industry and government. The study further noted that OSS, as a development model, enables the sharing of costs and benefits from a collective pool of knowledge.