Open Source Organisation Usage

Open source applications are great, and they are truly an equaliser when it comes to productivity, efficency, and dependability. It is strange, however, to see the landscape that exists for the usage of open source applications: it is used more, generally, by small organisations and very large organisations, and I think that that is worth commenting on, in some degree, if only for my own sake.

I’ve primarily worked in small organisations (my own infrastructure being one of them), and open source applications are appealing. There’s no cost but time, which is the primary currency that small organisations have; there’s no capital or they would be larger, and having the best bang for ones buck only gets you one place. Small shops are run by small teams, so they are much more flexible and able to not only have the server cattle as pets, but configure little as usually the use cases are few. As the organisation starts to grow, IT teams start to struggle; their focus gets split or skill pool polluted, there’s a bit more capital that can provide quick wins to band aid over the problem of cattle as pets, and the IT team is never quite on top of things enough to get everything they need done. Big organisations have time and money, and can usually wait for something to be built for exactly what they need, or can pay someone who can do get it done. They have their own expertise in house, and can demystify any anspect of a problem if they need to, or even expand something if it helps them. These organisations can refactor and shift and be more agile in the specifics because of the abstractation that comes from their size, where a smaller one would be more direct and could become more stuck.

An example of such what I have described is firewalls. Anyone can build a quick firewall in their garage, get up and running with some easy defaults in no time, and not worry because their attack surface is so small. As their organisation starts to grow, there is more to consider, but also other things to take attention away, and thats where other black box solutions look appealing; buying an existing solution that monitors and protects the firewall saves time. The large organisation on the other hand, needs specific things for itself, and is willing to commit time in order for it to be done right, where the features of the vendor don’t quite cut it. There are of course subleties and edge cases everywhere, but these are the examples of things and ideas I have seen first hand.