Business Systems Development
Immagini's solutions are developed using Free / Open Source Software (FOSS). FOSS, including such famous names as Linux and Apache, has a vital role to play in the IT mix of any modern organisation as it offers a level of freedom and flexibility not provided by proprietary alternatives.
There are many reasons why businesses are now choosing FOSS:
Directors Liability and Software Licencing
Software licencing can be a complex area and this complexity can lead to mistakes. If you are a company director, these mistakes can result in a criminal record, as having unlicensed software installed, not necessarily even in use, is a criminal offence.
With organisations such as the Federation Against Software Theft operating schemes for employees or others to inform on their employer if they suspect there may be unlicenced software, getting caught is a real risk.
Peace of Mind
Have you ever purchased some proprietary software and been forced into a seemingly endless cycle of 'voluntary' upgrades, simply because your version "isn't supported any more" ?
With FOSS, you are entitled to a copy of the source code that makes up the program, it will always be possible to support your current version of the software, if that is what is best for your needs.
Vendor Lock-in
You will receive the source code to any application written for you. Therefore there can be no lock-in. Other vendors may try to sell you a solution based on their own proprietary standards or proprietary protocols which can tie you to that supplier for, literally, years.
Bugs and Security Vulnerabilities
FOSS, like all software is not perfect, and does contain bugs and security vulnerabilities. However, in our view, FOSS has the following advantages compared to proprietary software:
Openness
Poor coding practices, bad design, short cuts, errors of logic and simple mistakes are not visible to you the end user if all you receive is a compiled binary executable file, which is often all you get when you purchase proprietary software. You could be trying to build your business on a pre-historic code base held together with the equivalent of sealing wax and string. Contrast this with FOSS, where everything is available for inspection.
No upgrade cycle
It is not uncommon for a proprietary software licence to contain the phrase "AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS". What this means in practice is that you have no rights to bug fixes at all. Some vendors go the other way, issuing bug-fix patches and requiring customers to apply the patch whether they want to or not.
If All Else Fails
With FOSS, you do not need to rely on someone else to solve your problem. Everything you need to make a program work they way you want is readily available to you. And if you do not want to do it, you could ask us to fix it for you.
Greater Choice
There are hundreds of options to choose from when deploying FOSS. Here are just a selection of some of the tools and software that we use:
- Python
- Asterisk PBX
- Zope
- OpenOffice
- Linux Thin Clients
