Benefits and Risks of Open Source Software for Management Information Technology

This article explores the benefits and risks of open source software for Management Information Technology. It discusses the advantages of OSS, alternatives to Microsoft Office and Quickbooks, and the legal and security challenges of using open source software.

Running head: MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Answer to Question 1..........................................................................................................2
Answer to Question 2..........................................................................................................3
Answer to Question 3..........................................................................................................4
References............................................................................................................................6

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Answer to Question 1
Open source software (OSS) can be considered to be beneficial to this organization that is
Marty organization (Steinmacher et al., 2015). Apart from this organization, open source
software has become important for other firm too. At present, every division of the organization
that is telecommunication system, personal productivity system and lastly operating system
among other people. OSS can easily provide a large number of benefits like
Less hardware cost: As Linux and other OSS are easily portable and compressible in
nature, it requires less hardware for carrying out various task (Silva et al., 2014). While hardware
power on server, windows and workstation are even more. With less power from the side of
hardware an individual can easily make use of cheaper or older hardware and get the proper
result from it.
High quality of software: OSS is considered to be high quality software. At the time of
using open source software the source code is available to large number of people (Barry et al.,
2015). Major number of software are designed in better way. Open source can be efficient to use
for coding purpose.
No-vendor lock in: IT managers of different organization encounter or face frustration
for dealing with vendor lock in (Vasilescu et al., 2014). Some other kind of disadvantage which
can be encountered are lack of portability and expensive license fees.
Integrated management: By making use of integrated management, Marty organization
can be benefitted from it. OSS makes use of various technologies like common information
model and management of web enterprise (Wu et al., 2018). This particular kind of technologies

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can be easily used for integration and combination of server and lastly management of
workstation.
Simple license agreement: Making use of open source software an individual does not
need to think about the license (Rosu et al., 2015). Open source software generally creates a
platform where various system can be easily installed in various times and can be used from any
given location
Lower Software cost: Making use of open source software can be beneficial for
reducing cost (Swain et al., 2015). Organization like Marty can easily save their money for
maintenance fee and license fee. The main cost which is involved is in documentation and lastly
media and support.
Answer to Question 2
Some of the software which is used by Marty organization are Microsoft office, Quick
books and Windows OS (Searson, 2015). Two kinds of alternative for Microsoft office are
apache open office and neo office.
Apache open office: It is known to be an open source office software which is available
for various individual. It comes up with certain number of tool which can be used for processing
of word, presentation and lastly spreadsheet (Steinmacher et al., 2015). This particular software
lets various individual to save and read files in word document format. Apache open office
comes up with certain tool which can be used for managing the task of office like writer,
calculation through spreadsheet, creating multimedia presentation, database.
Google Docs: Google Docs is considered to office productivity which lets an individual
with google account for carrying out various kinds of functions like sharing, creating and lastly

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collaboration on the web platform (Silva et al., 2014). Apart from this, google tends to provide
certain number of products like spreadsheet, drawing which is accessed and stored in central
way. All the given files can be easily accessed by the help of cloud based storage. Google
documents are considered to be an online word processing which let an individual to easily
creating and formatting of given text formats.
Two alternatives for Quick books are Zoho and Billy.
Zoho Books: Zoho book is a well-known software which provides proper accounting.
The organization requires popular kind of software like CRM and software for emailing. There
are certain number of books which makes use of automation for the small business (Barry et al.,
2015). Zoho Business comes up with a great dashboard which is needed for sorting with
command center for various kinds of business finances. Some of the vital features of Zoho is that
it is inclusive of client portal for log of various clients.
Billy: Billy is considered to be an accounting software solution for various small business
(Vasilescu et al., 2014). Invoices are prime focus on any small organization so this Billy
software has been designed in such a way that it can easily quote the cash process.
Answer to Question 3
Open source software is available in various kinds of online platforms and developers
does not have any idea related to quality or its safety (Wu et al., 2018). Open source software
emphasizes on certain number of legal and security challenges.
Security Risk: Any kind of vulnerability in open source software can be considered to be
lucrative platform for various hackers (Rosu et al., 2015). Open source vulnerabilities emphasize
on certain number of vulnerabilities which can be used for carrying exploit which is made by

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public. It provides the hacker with all kinds of information which are required for carrying the
attack.
Compliance risk: Almost every kind of software component comes up with software
component which requires license (Swain et al., 2015). While using an open source part in
project an individual can easily agree with various terms and condition.
Security risk: In many cases it is seen that organization tend to invest huge amount of
money which is required for quality assurance of code (Searson, 2015). Addressing the
components of team development are mainly addressing the quality of open source component.

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References
Barry, D. J., Durkin, C. H., Abella, J. V., & Way, M. (2015). Open source software for
quantification of cell migration, protrusions, and fluorescence intensities. J Cell
Biol, 209(1), 163-180.
Rosu, A. M., Pierrot-Deseilligny, M., Delorme, A., Binet, R., & Klinger, Y. (2015).
Measurement of ground displacement from optical satellite image correlation using the
free open-source software MicMac. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote
Sensing, 100, 48-59.
Searson, D. P. (2015). GPTIPS 2: an open-source software platform for symbolic data mining.
In Handbook of genetic programming applications (pp. 551-573). Springer, Cham.
Silva, V., Crowley, H., Pagani, M., Monelli, D., & Pinho, R. (2014). Development of the
OpenQuake engine, the Global Earthquake Model’s open-source software for seismic
risk assessment. Natural Hazards, 72(3), 1409-1427.
Steinmacher, I., Conte, T., Gerosa, M. A., & Redmiles, D. (2015, February). Social barriers
faced by newcomers placing their first contribution in open source software projects.
In Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work &
social computing (pp. 1379-1392). ACM.
Swain, N. R., Latu, K., Christensen, S. D., Jones, N. L., Nelson, E. J., Ames, D. P., & Williams,
G. P. (2015). A review of open source software solutions for developing water resources
web applications. Environmental Modelling & Software, 67, 108-117.

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Vasilescu, B., Serebrenik, A., Devanbu, P., & Filkov, V. (2014, February). How social Q&A
sites are changing knowledge sharing in open source software communities.
In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work &
social computing (pp. 342-354). ACM.
Wu, Q., Zhang, S., Song, H. F., Troyer, M., & Soluyanov, A. A. (2018). WannierTools: An
open-source software package for novel topological materials. Computer Physics
Communications, 224, 405-416.