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that the source code obtained from the OS community is of higher quality and
provides a superior platform. These proponents of FOSS were of the opinion that the
focus of FOSS has been on intrinsic qualities such as stability and efficiency, and
not necessarily just on product features.
This [development] focus is not diluted by any sales pressure. Owing to community in-
volvement, the quality of the product is superior. In addition, the large tester base further
ensures low occurrences of bugs and higher stability.
Further, respondents felt that FOSS provided better reliability, as efficiency gains
translated to reduced resource requirements, leading to lesser points of failure. The
access to source code further aided effective troubleshooting.
Open source helps in troubleshooting and to predict failures, because we have access to
source code.
10.4.5 Security
Our study indicates that FOSS provides means to improve security features with
77 % of the respondents claiming security advantages through the reuse of FOSS.
Respondents felt that their Linux systems have been significantly more secure than
proprietary operating systems. Due to the much larger number of eye balls on the
open source code, any security loopholes are spotted quickly and fixed by the com-
munity, thus ensuring that FOSS frameworks provide secure components.
Inherent transparency ofFOSSwards offunnecessary intrusion...Thereisnomotivationto
'hack' open code...Often, users find it is easy to debug available source and hence find it
more trustworthy leading to inherent security.
10.4.6 Cost Savings
Most firms were of the opinion that while cost savings helped them to justify adop-
tion of open source software, the benefits they accrued from adopting FOSS was
much greater than mere cost savings. Firms adopting open source primarily for desk-
top applications such as Open Office, Thunderbird and anti-virus software that were
typically deployed over a large number of desktops reported “cost savings” as their
sole driver for adopting open source. Firms adopting open source as their infrastruc-
ture layer reported benefits both in terms of cost and superior performance. Further
cost savings were reported due to reduced requirement on hardware resources owing
to the better performance efficiencies of the open source products. Firms adopting
open source for their application layer cited other strategic advantages as the main
driver for adopting open source and cost as being an incidental benefit.
Technology-led start-up firms, having a large part of their budgetary expenditure
on technology, found the better return on investment (ROI) provided by FOSS as a
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