Presentation at Jboye11, in Aarhus, November 10th 20111. Business needs makes it necessary to customizing software, but those changes are hard to maintain when upgrading or simply because the original developer has left. Open source software prides itself by having many eyes that look at the code and many commit their time and energy enhancing OSS. Is open source a viable alternative for commercial off-the shelf software (COTS)? Kristian presents the obstacles and opportunities with OSS. He will also shares some practical advice, based on what they have learnt when starting to use OSS.

1. Going open source first
Jboye11, Aarhus, 10th of november
Kristian Norling
Findwise
KristianNorling

2. Abstract
Business needs makes it necessary to customizing software,
but those changes are hard to maintain when upgrading or
simply because the original developer has left. Open source
software prides itself by having many eyes that look at the
code and many commit their time and energy enhancing
OSS. Is open source a viable alternative for commercial off-
the shelf software (COTS)?
Kristian will present the obstacles and opportunities that
OSS presents. He will also share some practical advice,
based on what they have learnt when starting to use OSS.

3. Agenda
• Is open source Software really free?
• What is good and bad with open source
• Is it possible to go all-in with open source?
• Open source software in Västra
Götalandsregionen. What we use?
• Do’s and dont’s

4. Region Västra Götaland
Public sector
50.000 employees

6. © Region Västra Götaland

7. Background
• Organisational challenges
• Internal vs. external expertise
• Strategy
• Philosophy goes well with public sector
values

8. Is Open Source Software
free?
• Of course not
• It saves time - no procurement
• No up-front license cost
>> Larger piece of budget for development
• Maintenance/support cost the same as for
proprietary software

9. What is good with Open
Source?
• Good quality code = works better
• Lots of developers with experience
• Easier to integrate, you can change anything
• Better support!
• Eco-system with communities
• Often loads of add-ons/plugins available for easy
extension of functionality
• Frequent updates

10. What is bad with Open
Source?
• You can change anything
• Few developers with experience
• Harder to evaluate
• Frequent updates

11. Is it possible to go all-in
with open source?
• Certainly possible - but is is the right?
• It is more of a question how does it
support your line of business
• It should always be considered!
• Should be included in your strategy

12. Open source software in
VGR. What we use

13. Liferay (Portal)

17. Alfresco (ECM)

19. Piwik (Web Analytics)

21. Solr/Lucene (ES)

23. Heritrix
(Web Archiving -
emergency web)

25. MediaWiki

27. Wordpress (Blog)

29. Drupal (WCM)

31. and of course VGR uses
infrastructure software like
PostgreSQL, Apache web
server, MySQL, Tomcat etc.

32. We have open sourced
a lot of stuff too
http://code.google.com/p/oppna-program/

33. Dos
• Do find a good systems integrator with
experience from the Open Source System
you have chosen.
• Do train your own staff

34. ...and don’ts
• Do not forget business requirements
• Do not think that Open Source is free -
Look at TCO
• Do not believe all the FUD spread by
proprietary vendors
• Do not believe everything that evangelist
like I say - make up your own mind!

35. Try it - maybe you will like it

36. Thank you!
kristian.norling@findwise.com
sys64738.se
twitter.com/kristiannorling
www.slideshare.net/kristiannorling
www.linkedin.com/in/kristiannorling