At Jarn, we make Open Source, Free Software. Simply because it is the responsible thing to do.

It'll also save you money, give you security, robustness, scalability and all those superior values you want from your software. Allow us to explain why:

Background: What is Open Source?

Open source is a term used for the applications where the reusable (ie. not customer-specific) results of software development are made publicly available to everyone. Some well-known examples of these types of applications are the operating system Linux, the web server Apache, the web browser Firefox, and of course Plone itself. Plone is distributed under a license called the GPL — which is the same license used by the operating system Linux.

Why Open Source?

Open source software makes it easier to interoperate

Have you ever been stuck with a piece of software that needs to talk to some other piece of software - and ended up replacing the solution because it was not possible due to the manufacturer not existing anymore, or having a proprietary format that you could not figure out how to interface/integrate with?

We know how you feel, and one of the inherent qualities of open source is that it's more future proof than closed systems. Anyone can interface with an existing system, no matter how far down the line you want to do it, or whether the system was originally built for that use case in the first place.

Open source software gives you independence from specific vendors

Don't like the business strategies or new pricing model of your current vendor? With open source, you have the flexibility to find a different vendor — there are hundreds of companies offering Plone services in the world — and you are free to find the one that works best for you.

Even the biggest vendors in the Content/Document Management space are 'consultingware' solutions

Content and Document Management is a very customized type of application, and has to be integrated with your existing systems to provide value. There is no magic silver bullet, no simple off-the-shelf application that will solve all your needs. Even the biggest vendors in the Content/Document Management space essentially provide you with Do-It-Yourself solutions (aka. consultingware). There's nothing wrong with this in itself, but it makes sense to not pay $1 million up-front for a system you need to customize and adapt to your company anyway. We believe your money are better spent on your needs rather than lining the pockets of the shareholders of the company you are doing business with.

Open source also lets you evaluate every solution on its own merits before making a decision — without the vendor lock-in or additional costs.

Software is a liability, not an asset

You heard us right. "But I just invested $X million in development of this software, it is a competitive advantage for our company — we'll need to keep it to ourselves" - this line of reasoning might make sense for end-user applications (and only really if you make your living from selling them) , but certainly not for infrastructure. You end up effectively maintaining your own little island of software. Unless you are in the business of selling proprietary software (which very few companies are, in reality), you end up paying a lot of money to maintain a piece of infrastructure that nobody else uses, and nobody else improves on.

By distributing the development cost among several companies, open source reduces the risk of maintaining your own infrastructure, and in addition lets you have a much more secure and well-tested system.

Open source is more secure

There's a good reason applications like the Apache webserver and the Mozilla and Firefox family of web browsers are more secure than their closed-source, proprietary counterparts - since the source code is available to anyone, it's easier to spot programming errors, and correct them.

The response time to fix security errors in the open source community is also unbeatable — of the few security problems found in Plone so far, most have normally been fixed within 24-48 hours of discovery.

Security through obscurity (ie. hiding the source code) doesn't work in the long run. There's only so many security holes you can hide by not giving people access to the code underneath. There is no way any team (even one of Microsoft's size) can compete with the open market and the thousands of eyes looking at the source code every day in open source projects.

Sharing the cost of maintaining infrastructure makes sense

In Content Management, infrastructure is necessary, but doesn't make money in itself. It's the services you add on top of this that makes the difference - so it makes sense to maintain a common infrastructure with other companies.

This way, each company can specialize in particular areas of the infrastructure, and perfect the approach and implementation over time — and other companies do the same to their respective parts of the system.

Open source is a survival of the fittest

In open source, only the best survive - not the ones with the most draconian licensing policies. This means that you decide — and affect — which companies should survive. If you don't like the business strategy or quality of a certain company, you take your money and business elsewhere.