Open (Source) for Business

If your experience in business IT has, like mine, been very heavily focussed on Microsoft’s ecosystem and lots of propriety systems that have a strong “Don’t look behind the curtain” vibe to them then my guest today may help shine some light on how open source solutions can be a great fit in the business.

It’s my pleasure to have Tom join us, having been a fan of his YouTube content for quite some time. He’s become one of the most recognised sources of knowledge for the wonderful open-source firewall project, pfSense, and sharing valuable insights on other projects such as XCP-ng, TrueNAS, and many more.

We take a look at what we mean by open source, why many businesses still prefer closed source solutions from big names, the security considerations of both closed and open source projects, and talk a bit about Pop!_os by System76.

What’s been your experience with open-source solutions, particularly in business, have you had any good or bad experiences you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you, so please send a note to podcast@crossedwires.net, leave a comment on the post, or join the discussion on our Discord server.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

• Tom Lawrence on Mastodon
• Lawrence Technology Services
• Lastpass December 2022 Security Incident: What Happened and What’s Not Encrypted – Lawrence Systmes (YouTube)
• XCP-ng
• BitWarden
• LibreOffice
• Nextcloud
• TrueNAS
• Pop!_os by System76

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:04: Introductions
2. 00:07:48: What Does Open Source Actually Mean?
3. 00:16:06: A Bit On XCP NG
4. 00:19:04: The Attachment to Closed Source Solutions
5. 00:25:57: What About Google?
6. 00:31:41: Microsoft Loves Open Source?
7. 00:33:28: Cloud vs On Premise
8. 00:43:17: Software Bill of Materials
9. 00:49:14: Tech YouTubers
10. 00:51:31: A PopOS! Confession
11. 00:59:16: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW