Evaluating Open Source

CowboyRobot writes "Jordan Hubbard cofounded FreeBSD and now oversees the Darwin implementation of BSD for Apple. He describes open source as 'finally being openly acknowledged as a commercial engineering force-multiplier and important option for avoiding significant software development costs.' And thus, companies need to know how to evaluate open source engineering as an option for them. In a new article titled Open Source to the Core, Hubbard goes through a typical open source adoption process."

Comments

Re:avoiding significant development costs..

[nial-in-a-box]

Doesn't necessarily have to be at the expense of anything. Mainly, though, it can lead to more complicated development, especially during a transition period. Also, with the change in how technical support is handled, more problems can arise at that point. Basically, the best thing to do is check everything out as much as you can and be very prepared. A wide margin of error, especially in the time department, can lead to a great deal of success when making a potentially massive transition.

Suprise!

[Proteus]

In a five page article on open source, he mentions Linux 3 times -- once wrt KDE, once wrt Gnome, and once wrt Slashdot. That's it.

Maybe because:

• Linux is already well-known
• Linux was /not/ the first open-source product
• There's a lot more to OSS than Linux