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One problem I have with open-source is not often the product or documentation, but the level of community involvement and support. Response time for some questions on official forums can take more than a week, which can honestly make a big difference when choosing a platform for commercial services use. However, I find that evaluating the community beforehand is very difficult. How do I know what are the most common issues, and whether or not people are getting support for them? How do I know what problems I personally might encounter based upon my project, which would require some level of community support? Do you have a formula for performing this evaluation?
I've usually found that relying on community support for anything mission critical is asking for trouble. So I usually stay away from open source unless it's something that I'm confident we can support in-house or there is a commercial support service available for it.
If your question is posed because you don't want to pay for support, then I think your best bet is to ask questions about a specific project on neutral forums like this and see what others have experienced in terms of support and timeliness of resolution to issues.
If you are willing to pay for support, there are companies that provide commercial support for open source projects, like OpenLogic as an example that could factor into your formula.
The only real way to evaluate the community is to try it, participate in the community. Most communities will have good support networks available in one manner or another. Also many individuals are starting to offer support services for the various frameworks as well, for those looking for a more dedicated resource for problem resolution.
But I find the best way is to just get in there, ask a few questions, poke around at the resources, and really see what is there.
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We develop scientific software and I manage a small group of applied scientists who write great code. A lot of our products depend on stable development tools which we've been using for developing a stable code base. Now the issue is, someone from the management visited an open source conference and was too pleased to see a lot of great tools which can be used internally for free in place of the commercial ones we've been using so far. So he suggested to the management to remove costs of buying the tools we've using and shift to the open source ones. Now I do not have anything against the open source movement but through a small experiment I found that my team is spending a lot more time debugging and maintaining stable code bases for those open source tools .
I'm sure a lot of other program manager's have had this problem so far. Would people relate their experiences and let me know of any studies made on this subject ? i want to present a cost benefit analysis to the management by giving some statistical facts not just empirical evidence. I'll be glad to know some case studies thereof.
I think open source is terrific, but I use a commercial IDE (IntelliJ) for Java development, even though there are popular open source alternates Eclipse and NetBeans. In my experience, IntelliJ is the best IDE, hands down, with a measurable impact on my productivity.
I can't say that it's true of all tools, but in this case it is.
I don't believe that either open source or commercial tools can claim the high ground here, because I can cite good and bad examples on both sides. Blanket statements and "me, too" thinking are usually a bad idea.
Statistics will be hard to come by. 86% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
I would expect managers in a company whose products are based on science to be more rational. You're a small firm - talk it through. If it's not possible in your situation, then no one has a chance.
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Background: There are a couple of concerns that are not core business for us. They are essential to our core business, but we have no business writing on our own, in terms of manpower, time, and expertise. I am familiar and very comfortable with some open-source implementations, using closed-source-friendly licenses, that could fill these gaps. Closed-source alternatives I either could not find, or were crap.
I put together an informal proposal to show my boss, including the original licenses for each project for legal review. Being a business owner that knows little about the world of open-source, he was initially hesitant when he realized some of these libraries were. I tried to educate him to the best of my abilities (I'm no open-source warrior myself), but he did bring up some valid questions that, in some cases, I don't feel I answered as well as I could have.
Concerns (worded from my boss's prospective)
How do we know and ensure there is no malicious code in an open-source project? Read and understand every line? At that point we could have just written it ourselves!
Who do we blame when things go wrong? With support licenses and a responsible party, we can get things fixed. And if they fail to come through, well... you know.
How do we establish or measure that an approach or implementation in an open-source project is sound, efficient, or good quality?
What sort of liability do we open ourselves up to, in terms of licensing [granted, this is more a question for lawyers and an issue of RFTL].
Question: How have or would you have addressed these concerns?
How do we know and ensure there is no malicious code in an open-source project? Read and understand every line? At that point we could have just written it ourselves!
Same problem with closed source. Actually worse with closed source. With open source at least you CAN review it yourself, or you can take someone else's word for it. With closed source, taking someone's word for it is your only option.
Who do we blame when things go wrong? With support licenses and a responsible party, we can get things fixed. And if they fail to come through, well... you know.
Probably the biggest issue. This depends on which particular solutions you're using. Some things are backed by a reputable vendor (e.g. Red Hat) whereas others have virtually no support. But that "you know" is critical here: ultimately there is no way to guarantee that someone will fix bugs that you encounter when you are using closed source. At least with open source you can hire a 3rd party consultant to do the job, for the right price, because you have the source.
How do we establish or measure that an approach or implementation in an open-source project is sound, efficient, or good quality?
The same way you would with any other code? I don't have any better answers for this one.
What sort of liability do we open ourselves up to, in terms of licensing [granted, this is more a question for lawyers and an issue of RFTL].
Yep, have a lawyer advise you on this. Every tech business should employ a lawyer anyway. The answer will depend on the specific licenses you're dealing with and what exactly you plan to do with the software you develop.
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Cofundos is a project where you can pay for tasks to be completed in open-source programs. If a developer solves this task, he will earn the money. Is this a good way to push open-source software?
No.
Joel Spolsky has talked about the phenomenon of people doing for free what they would never do for pay in the context of contributing to sites like Stack Overflow. People have all sorts of reasons for doing things for free:
Helping out a friend or society.
Fame and recognition.
Hobby or passtime.
Building a resume.
Learning about the world around them.
When you offer money it either destroys the purpose of doing something ("It's not a hobby if I get paid—it's a job.") or reduces the intrinsic value of doing it ("I'm not helping out society—I'm helping out me."). The same is true for Open Source contributions.
People do get paid for Open Source work. But normally by companies who are using Open Source software and need certain features and fixes. Sometimes they are full time, but often it's just submitting a bug fix or feature so that it will be carried to the next release. But that happens because the project is useful to the company.
So a better way to "push" Open Source is to use Open Source. If a project is missing a feature, you'll need to add it yourself or find someone else who will. Any scheme that offers money for a feature directly will likely not work. And if the feature does get added, it'll be added by someone who wants to get paid rather than someone who wants better software.
Well if you absolutely need a new feature in a program and you can't contribute, then sure. Otherwise I don't see why you don't just do it. You'll learn more by doing it yourself.
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I always have found the open source space interesting but have never actually participated in any projects. I recently had what I thought was a great a idea that was different from other projects I had seen in the area (in case it matters it was a .NET DI framework).
My question is if I have a funky idea should I join an existing project and share my ideas or create a competing project with exactly what I want. There are a few projects in the space the are similar to what I was thinking but they don't quite capture the same ideals.
Is extra competition frown upon in the open source space?
Competition is as important as collaboration in open source. Assuming the licenses are compatible, features and ideas can be cross-pollenating. Everybody wins.
the short answer to this is another question: do you want to contribute to a discussion, or do things your way?
You may want to consider writing it your own way and turning that process into an article that you could submit to CodeProject. Then if there seems to be interest in the article, add it to SourceForge. I've seen a lot of tools and widgets get a quick audience and coding help that way. One that I use often is XPTable, which started as a CodeProject article and eventually became an open source project on SourceForge.
BTW, you'll know if its a hit, because you'll start to get lots of requests for improvement, or people even submitting their own fixes and enhancements to your article.
Thank you for your time. I have decided to contribute directly for the project in some areas they were hurting. By doing so I can help the project and learn from the masters.
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What open source projects would you recommend as a good place for a starting open source developer? Factors that I think would be important are some obvious ones like well written code and a community that is helpful to newbies. But it might be nice if the code base is such that I can start hacking some small problems without really understanding the details of how everything works.
I'd prefer something that can be developed on Linux using C/C++/Java/Python/Scala.
Trying to pick a project like that will never work because it's not something you're passionate about. What's an open source project that you use daily or enjoy using? Go work with that one.
It really depends on what your interests are as to what project to dive into.
Rationale for a larger project (e.g. Firefox, OpenOffice, etc) is that it has many developers, a well established code base, and many small tasks/bugs to be worked out.
Rationale for a smaller project is that you will become more intimate with the code and application. You will likely get to know other developers on the team and understand the overall concept better. Additionally, your additions to the project may be more noticeable.
sourceforge has a list of projects seeking a new developer. Therer are several for your requested programming languages:
http://sourceforge.net/people/?category_id=1
Apart from developers they have more help requests:
http://sourceforge.net/people/
Pick one you use and like already.