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Open Source Myths Debunked
Claim 1: Open Source software is more secure.
Truth: A lot of the software leveraged for security is proprietary and proprietary software can and does leverage Open Source security features too. For example your payment solution (DPS) and your banking software is closed source (proprietary) for obvious reasons, but Open Source software will interface with these solutions to provide payment functionality. Many encryption utilities (Sha-1 MD5, etc.) are Open Source, but are used by proprietary software for storing passwords and authentication data.
The fact of the matter is both Open Source and Proprietary software rely on each other for security.
Claim 2: Open Source software has more developers and therefore is higher quality.
Truth: Open Source software can be very well developed and be produced at a very high quality. It can do a lot of things very well. So can proprietary software. Open Source software is usually developed to be fairly general and suit the purpose for many different uses. Proprietary software has the luxury of being able to specialise. Proprietary software can be developed with very specific uses in mind, meaning it doesn't have to compromise anything in order to allow for components that aren't relevant to a particular industry.
Claim 3: Open Source software is more customisable.
Truth: Sure it is. It needs to be. Proprietary software is often built for a specific purpose, so it is already customised to perfectly achieve that purpose. It is designed to allow for the polishing of certain functionality and needs within an industry, but as it is specialised software it doesn't need to be generalist.
Claim 4: Freedom to change to another vendor.
Truth: As mentioned above, Open Source software requires lots of customisation to work for a particular purpose. Often vendors will extend the software themselves, by writing modules and plugins that they then support and maintain internally. As this functionality is not available "out of the box" you can't just move your solution to another vendor easily. Also in most cases when you are changing vendors it is at a time when you are looking to refresh and upgrade your website and software anyway. The truth is in most cases you are just as locked in to the same vendor, even if they use Open Source software.
Claim 5: Open Source software is cheaper.
Truth: Talk to the ReserveGroup team at Meetings, or send an email to matthew.hattie@reservegroup.biz and you'll see that you can be paying the same, or less for a customised solution, built of software specifically built for destination marketing (NTOs, RTOs, etc.), Hotels & Chains, Holiday parks & Motels and the tourism industry.
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