Can the open source approach to software development promote transparency and remove FUD -- fear, uncertainty and doubt?
Open-Xchange, Inc. today posted another position paper intended to review the forces changing the market for information technology in general and collaborative solutions in specific. The well-known software analyst, Daniel Kusnetzky, who is now the Executive Vice President, Market Strategy, and Paul Sterne, CFO and General Manager of Americas of Open-Xchange Inc, write these position papers. This paper, “Open Source Transparency: The End of FUD” can be found on the Open-Xchange, Inc. website.
By requiring that source code is freely available to all, the open source movement has made transparency and peer review two of its guiding principles. Transparency undermines FUD because all users have the ability to see exactly how the software works. Transparency increases quality by subjecting all aspects of the code to constant peer review. Transparency and peer review negate FUD by shifting the debate to the objective “what is it” (or as Kant said “the thing itself”) from the subjective “who is it”.