Validation

One of the most relevant aspects of the modern business climate is the emergent maturity of open-source apps, and related open-access and open-data trends.^[1][2] These trends are clearly the direction for the future, with built-in support bases and opportunities for new business in the form of plugins and add-ons, interfacing etc. Open source means that companies like LabLynx can identify useful apps and offer them seamlessly to the marketplace through our cloud-hosting platform, which solves one of the biggest barriers to widespread use: problematic, complex and disparate installation and set up processes, often with sparse, inadequate instructions or support materials.

As expressed by Jeff Walpole, co-founder and CEO of the leading open technology professional services firm Phase2 Technology ("which focuses on clients and solutions in the online publishing, public policy, open government, international development and advocacy sectors"^[3]):

"Organizations that don’t already have experience with open-source projects often find commercial software has a less-daunting road to getting up and running. Vendors often provide sales support and engineering staff trained to make this happen. ... Finding up-to-date, well-written and easy to use documentation can be a problem with any software. However, vendor-provided software often comes with better documentation because it is someone’s job to write it and keep it up to date for each release or version of the product."^[4]

LabLynx provides the best of both worlds by supporting our open source editions. Additionally, since we have highly skilled developers and the source code is available to us, we can tweak features and functions and fix any issues that may affect an otherwise useful app.

The trend to open, collaborative apps, access to information and databases means that the collective power of the entire community is applied to innovation and refinement of these resources, which greatly increases benefits to both vendors and users alike, while offering opportunities to other players like consultants and developers who offer genuine value-based services.^[5]

1. ↑ "Open access". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access. Retrieved 15 September 2016. 
2. ↑ "2015 Survey Results". North Bridge. http://www.northbridge.com/2015-future-open-source-survey-results. Retrieved 15 September 2016. 
3. ↑ "Jeff Walpole". GovFresh. Luke Fretwell. http://www.govfresh.com/author/jeffwalpole. Retrieved 10 October 2016. 
4. ↑ Walpole, J. (November 2008). "Open Source vs. Vendor-Provided Software: Comparing Them Side by Side". Idealware. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160410011844/http://www.idealware.org/articles/open-source-vs-vendor-provided-software. Retrieved 15 September 2016. 
5. ↑ "The Benefits of Open Source Software". Zivtech. https://www.zivtech.com/benefits-open-source-software. Retrieved 15 September 2016.