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Business Considers Open Source on Par with Commercial Software
quad4b writes "At the International Conference on COTS-based Software Systems in Spain last week, representatives from organizations such at the Software Engineering Institute (remember the CMM), National Research Council of Canada and the European Software Institute discussed the inclusion of Open Source Software for the first time on the conference agenda. COTS software includes stuff like commercial operating systems, desktop software, and ERP systems among others. The conference examined best practices for integrating these pre-built components in systems development efforts. They conceded that open source software is essentially no different from commercially built software and that both types have their risks in terms of supportability and security. (what opponents of OSS say is its weakness) Interestingly enough, a senior representative of IBM was present and discussed with some of us, over lunch, how IBM is determined to move to an open desktop based on Linux and OpenOffice within about a year."
This was a rumour started by an internal memo that had no followup. Is IBM really going to push this all the way?
I thought IBM was having trouble doing that?
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Ill assume that with "os" they mean free.
It isnt very surprising that a lot of companies are switching from expensive propietary software to freely distributable OS software.
A good example why, are companies that use photoshop for some basic image editing. They are paying huge license fees for software that isn't even used for its full potental.
For them it doesnt matter that GIMP has "less" features, since most of them aren't needed.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Try Googling:
COTS = Commercial Off-The-Shelf
I think CMM = Capability Maturity Model, but I still have no idea what it means.
ERP = (probably) Enterprise Resource Planning
OSS = Open Source Software (but you probably knew that...)
Are they really "the business" as the subject let's us to believe or something else?
At least for the Software Engineering Institute, they are clearly "the business." IIRC, even the government has CMM requirements for some contracts. Management salivates over the SEI daily in many companies, at least until they finally understand the CMM provides no process at all but only recommendations.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
CMM is in fact the Capability Maturity Model, from the SEI.
Here's more info.
There are 5 levels. It's damn near impossible to get a level 5. IBM Federal Systems (later Loral) was certified Level 5. They did shuttle avionics. When I worked for a major defense contractor, it was a huge success when we were certified Level 3.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
FYI, the Software Engineering Institute is Carnegie Mellon University's Department-of-Defense-sponsored research center whose "core purpose is to help others make measured improvements in their software engineering capabilities and to develop the right software, delivered defect free, on time and on cost, every time."
cp /dev/zero ~/signature.txt
In most cases, management is forced to be "SEI CMM Level II/III/... compliant" by some customer who wants that.
CMM -- as it should be -- doesn't dictate process. It does say that there is a documented process and how it should behave. This allows each project or group to choose how to be compliant. That takes work.
As management often is looking to tick off a check box, they will do just enough to hit the high points outlined in CMM. That's good, though, since it's usually an improvement over the old methods.
That said, there are a multitude of abuses that occur under the name of SEI CMM so it tends to get a bad rep by association. The ideas, though, are simple and correct in most situations where software will be used over years or decades. It's overkill for small groups that require quick turn-around and where the code is not intended to last forever -- in most cases.
SEI CMM is a tool. Ignore it or use it as is appropriate. Not knowing it at all is a problem in itself.
Actually, the first company to ship a computer with a GUI was Commodore with the Amiga. It was also the first PC with true multitasking, and the first PC with dedicated hardware processors for audio and video. The Mac came shortly after, and magazines at the time rated the Amiga higher then the Mac. Unfortunately Commodore totally sucked at marketing and did not further develop the Amiga much beyond its initial release.
I'm running a Linux desktop at work (I'm allowed some freedom - nobody else is doing this) and it's mostly IBM tools that force me to include VMWare in the setup.
Particularly annoying examples in our ERP's iSeries (AS/400) environment are the iSeries Navigator tool, and Websphere Dev Studio for iSeries. More and more OS/400 functions are only managable through Nav, and the CODE/400 components of WDSCi make source patching for the ERP a breeze. But the only discussions I've seen of integrating RPG editing into Eclipse (or the WDSC client's version) basically just end with "why bother?" CODE is a stand-alone Windows program is my answer to "why?". If the webfacing tools were all integrated in WDSCi it'd help people undertaking those efforts as well.
Witty signature omitted for brevity.