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OSS projects are viewed as adding complexity into the IT infrastructure but they are no more complex than proprietary solutions. The standard shrink-wrap proprietary products don’t guarantee interoperability with competing products.
Additionally, to secure features not available in its products, propriety vendors will just point customers to equally expensive partner solutions. These layers add complexity to the IT infrastructure and present multiple points of failure.
A mixed-source solution, blending open source with the proprietary code of a commercial open-source vendor, gives organisations the flexibility to change security policies without fear of breaking contracts and voiding warrantees while avoiding interoperability issues.
Vendors are often criticised for taking from the OSS community but not giving anything back. Some even question the legality of charging money for products based on the work of others. This myth comes from a misunderstanding of open source licenses.
The most common open source licensing, the GPL, states vendors are free to distribute and sell OSS if they follow the rules of the license and add value. Vendors not only harness existing projects and code-bases in order to build solutions, but also add value by offering features, performance improvements and financial support.
Like Chinese whispers, myths surrounding OSS have become distorted over time. The open-source community has created remarkable tools, but as the community focuses more on creation than marketing, end-user awareness suffers.
Mixed-source security solutions give customers the best of both worlds – the low cost and reliability of open source and the technical support, training, and user-friendly interfaces of proprietary products. OSS security is no longer just a tool for the technology obsessive.
