As I was reading about Mårten Mickos last week (whose company was acquired by HP), I came across several articles he authored about avoiding lock-in through open source.
No where does lock-in come as a bigger surprise than in software. Lock-in happens in many forms. Sometimes it is through reliance on proprietary 3rd-party tools. Other times it happens when organizations write “glue” code to integrate different pieces of software to achieve a solution, thereby locking yourself into a software solution of your own making. Mickos says, “Because of ongoing efforts required to maintain these [design locked-in systems], they are costlier than any other form of lock-in.”
There are ways to avoid these problems. You avoid vendor lock-in by using open source software. You avoid design lock-in by using standard software components with industry-proven interfaces.
At ArrayFire, we are moving all of our business towards this sort of thinking. We want our customers to be completely free of lock-in. We want to provide excellent value, without trickery or lock-in, but merely by virtue of how good we are at what we do.
What are your thoughts at avoiding lock-in through open source?
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