There are plenty of reasons why we at Iribat Interactive believe that open source software is right for your business. On this page, we'll discuss a few of them.
When we use the word 'free' to describe open source software, we're not talking about the monetary value-we're talking about something more important. We're talking about the freedom which your organization has to use the software however you see fit. Iribat Interactive is based in the United States of America - freedom is a core value of our company. When you use open source software, you are free to install it on as many devices as you wish. You can give all of your employees copies to take home and use on their personal computers, you can give copies to your business partners to make collaboration easier for both of you, and you can give it away to your customers as a means of strengthening the services you provide. You'll never have to worry about being sued by an angry software company for installing your software on one too many PCs, or for having one too many people connect to your servers. End user license agreements that tell you how, where, and when you can use software can be confusing and hard to follow - and as a business, that is one worry you don't need to have.
When you use open source software, you don't have to wait for the bad guys to find security holes in your software. Every programmer and security expert in the world is free to examine the source code that makes up open source software - which means that the chances of someone fixing holes in the software are much, much greater.
This last point is a very important one. As a business, you're bound to have lots of important data - customer info, trade secrets, reports, accounting info, etc. - that you want to store digitally. Your company alone should have complete control over how that data is stored, how it is accessed, and who can access it. Open source software stores data in open file formats, published and recommended by standards bodies such as the International Organization for Standardization and the World Wide Web Consortium. This ensures that your data will always be accessible to you, at all times, regardless of what software is or isn't available at the time – and you'll never have to worry about being crippled by vendor lock-in.