Open Source Movement - Drawbacks

Drawbacks

• The structure of the open source community requires that individuals have programming expertise in order to engage in open code modification and exchange. Individuals interested in supporting the open source movement may lack this skill set, but there are many other ways of contributing.
• Programmers and developers comprise a large percentage of the open source community and sought-out technical support and/or documentation may not be useful or clear to open source software lay-users.
• The structure of the open source community is one which involves contributions of multiple developers and programmers; software produced in this fashion may lack standardization and be incompatible with various computer applications and capabilities.
• Production can be very limited. Programmers that create open source software often can turn their attention elsewhere very quickly. This opens the door for many bug filled programs and applications out there. Because no one is being paid to create it, many projects do not get finished.
• The quality of the software in an open source industry is decided by the user. A user has to learn the skills of the software on their own and then make the determination.
• Librarians may not be equipped to take on this new responsibility of technologies.
• There is no guarantee that development will happen. It is unknown if an open source project will become usable, especially when a project is started without significant support from one or more organizations. Even if the project does reach a usable stage, it is possible the project can die if there is not enough funding or interest toward it.
• It is sometimes difficult to know that a project exists, and its current status. Especially for open source projects without significant support, there is not much advertising involved in open source software.
• Not much support exists for open source software. Qualified support essentially does not exist. The available support for open source software is predominantly self-motivated discussions found on the Internet, and since the software is constantly being changed, no manuals or instructions are made.
• No guarantee of updates. Although open source software is available to anyone for free, regular updates are not assured since users do not pay for its use.
• Beyond the obvious detriments towards the theoretical success of open source software, there are several factors that contribute to the lack of long-term success in open source projects. One of the most obvious drawback is that without pay or royalty licensing, there is little financial incentive for a programmer to become involved with a project in the first place, or to continue development and support once the initial product is released. This leads to innumerable examples of well-anticipated software being forever condemned to beta versions and unsupported early model products. With donations as the only source of income for a truly open source (and GPL licensed) project, there is almost no certainty in the future of the project simply because of developer abandonment, making it a poor choice for any sort of application in which future versions, support and a long-term plan would be essential, as is the case for most business software.
• Organization's with Enterprise Agreements still pay licensing agreements even if they choose to run alternative open source software. Therefore many organizations are unlikely to consider using alternative products. As a cost saving method of using Microsoft products, many large corporations use enterprise agreements and therefore pay a single company wide IT Licensing fee, at lower cost per product."Organizations with EAs that are interested in alternative products can benefit from the gap-filler scenario, but only after they drop Microsoft Office from their EA at the next renewal and final true-up."