Vox Lucida Pty. Ltd.

A clear voice in a confusing world.

Facts About Open Source

Open Source software has many misconceptions, often promulgated by the proponents of Open Source themselves. As a commercial consultancy that is trying to do business with Open Source libraries, we would like to dispel some concerns a prospective customer may have.

Can I use Open Source in my commercial application?

This is a complex area. For PTLib/OPAL, the answer is yes. However, that does not necessarily apply to all Open Source.

Isn’t Open Source free?

Well, yes, free as in freely available, however, it is not free as in zero cost. Often it is just the hidden cost of having your in house staff become experts in the Open Source system. Sometimes without any support but the (usually) inadequate documentation available for the system.

Robert Heinlein originated the acronym TANSTAAFL, There Aint No Such Thing As a Free Lunch, meaning there is always a cost, even if you can’t see it.

Support is free too, isn’t it?

Only up to a point. There are mailing lists where you can ask questions. You may get an answer. You may not. Depending on the complexity of the question and mood of the experts on the list.

People such as ourselves try to make a living off support, so, I am sure you understand, it is not in our best interests to be too helpful! However, it is also good advertising to have people up and running quickly so we do help out.

Open Source is really buggy.

As a rule Open Source is no more, and often less, buggy than commercial closed source. With something used extensively like Linux or Perl, they are very bug free. The “many eyes” looking at the code find all sorts of things. For something less popular like PTLib/OPAL, the effect is less dramatic, but it still there.

We cannot afford to do the rigorous acceptance and regression testing that a commercial operation would be doing. So, fresh new releases may start off more buggy than a commercial offering, but over time these are ironed out by the thousands of users that do the weirdest things with the code. Stuff that a Test Engineer may never think of!

And, of course, having access to the source means that you can go find that bug too! You do not have to wait till the commercial operation gets around to it.

The documentation is woeful!

Well yes, documentation can always be better. Even commercial documentation is often not that good. This is one of the negatives of Open Source. It is not “fun” to write documentation so Open Source authors often don’t, or do as little as possible.

It should be pointed out that the PTLib/OPAL documentation is better than most!

How do I get help?

And this is where we come in. You need to make money, we need to as well. Utilizing our expertise can save you many days or weeks of your engineers struggling with the complexity of the system.

But, aren’t you guys a couple of University Students working from their bedrooms?

Most definitely not! We are dedicated professionals that have been working in the industry for over twenty years. There is a wealth of experience, not just in VoIP but in software engineering as a whole.