A new survey from Zimbra and the Ponemon Institute finds that 70 percent of U.S. IT professionals think open source software offers better control and business continuity than proprietary software. In addition, around two-thirds of respondents said open source software would likely have fewer bugs. Interestingly, the lower cost of open source software weren’t as important to those surveyed as its high quality.
Olivier Thierry, chief marketing officer of Zimbra, said that commercial open source software offers the best of both worlds. “Open-source software suffers from bad PR due to the belief that it involves no vendor accountability. In pure open software, nobody is accountable for the security but you,” he said. “In pure proprietary software, you have vendor interest ensuring security. Commercial open source is the best of both models, with vendor accountability and community backing ensuring transparency and code quality.”
