Tech Guide 2

You are the CIO of your company, and you have to develop an application of strategic importance to your firm. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using open-source software?

The use and growing popularity of open-source software (OOS) can be extremely beneficial to some companies and detrimental to others. We begin by discussing arguably the most important factor which is cost. Cost can be an advantage or disadvantage depending on perspective. The advantages of free software are obvious, but identifying the disadvantages may require stepping back and viewing the situation from the perspective of software vendors whose revenue is made solely on sales of proprietary software. OSS that can provide the same functionality as proprietary software sold for profit is very difficult to compete with. In some cases, OSS can force for-profit software vendors out of business so it would be wise to consider the business value of the competing vendor before choosing to opt for an OSS product. Another important factor to consider is the quality of support that can be expected from a product whether it be OSS or vendor software. Often times in larger OSS projects, the original developer(s) can be very difficult to contact and may require a fee to support the product. Many online communities exist for OSS projects that may be able to provide support, but there is no guarantee that the person seeking support will be met with the same professional courtesy as one would expect from a vender. Proprietary software in many cases can prove to be very difficult when it comes to searching online for a particular issue, where as with OSS, one may only need to use an appropriate search string in order to find a resolution to a particular issue online.

Security is a major concern for businesses information systems and software, and OSS comes with pros and cons in security in particular. OSS generally means that the source code is published publicly for anyone to view. This can make vulnerabilities in the code very visible. That can be good for businesses trying to improve security (white hats) but may also be very bad as those with malicious intentions can identify and exploit those vulnerabilities (black hats). Often times with OSS, more black hats exist who wish to exploit the code than there are white hats who wish to fortify the code. Security may not be as big of a concern if the application being developed is to be run on a private intranet and any data that gets transmitted from the application publicly is properly encrypted.

Another topic that often poses concern in regards to OSS is the General Public License (GPL). The GPL included with the OSS project may require that any distributed modification to the source code be published as OSS with the same licensing acquired from the original. This could be counterproductive to the security advantages previously discussed. Businesses may not want to share their methodologies and techniques used to modify the original source code and there tends to be many grey areas defining what violates the original GPL.

While there are many other advantages and disadvantages to utilizing OSS, the topics mentioned above serve as the biggest concerns for businesses. An ultimate decision on whether or not to choose an OSS solution will need to be based on the business need for the application being developed, the distribution and licensing requirements, security concerns, and the type of support than can be expected.

You have to take a programming course, or maybe more than one, in your MIS program. Which programming language(s) would you choose to study? Why? Should you even have to learn a programming language? Why or why not.

Ultimately C++ would be the ideal choice if the end goal is to be highly employable and earn a competitive wage as demand for C++ developers is fairly high. It would be quite a bit more difficult to learn than Java, but the market is flooded with Java developers and the wages tend to be lower. If cross platform versatility to desired, then one can easily rule out C# and Visual Basic. It’s important to have at least a basic understanding of programming for anyone actively involved in the IT industry.

 A great deal of software is available free over the Internet. Go to http://www.pcmag.com/article2/ 0,2817,2260070,00.asp, and observe all the software available for free. Choose one software program and download it to your computer. Prepare a brief discussion about the software for your class.

I was very pleased to see one of my favorite applications to make this list; Sandboxie. Sandboxie creates a virtual session of the program it’s running and prevents any changes caused in that session from having a permanent affect on the system. Sandboxie is generally intended to run a virtualized web browser, but almost any program can be run with Sandboxie. It basically works like this; with Sandboxie running, one can open a web browser by right clicking a program and selecting “run sandboxed”. This will open the program with hash tags on the menu bar indicating that program is being run in the virtualized sandbox environment. If the sandboxed program is a web browser, then any system changes made within that session including cookies, history, cache, malicious code, downloads, and viruses will remain isolated from the system until the box is either deleted or the changes are made permanent by the user. In a way, it can be considered a proactive approach to system security by not allowing malicious changes to take effect on the system. Sandboxie can also be useful for testing and debugging purposes of programs and scripts. If you’re writing a Windows script that will make system changes like creating many folders and files on the file system and don’t want to manually undo those changes, then cmd.exe can be run in a sandbox to execute the script and the sandbox can be deleted easily to revert the changes made. Even before deleting the sandbox after running the script, if you were to search for the newly created files and folders in explorer or through a command prompt not running in the sandbox, you will notice those files and folders do not exist on the system.