Open Source Programming Tools On the Rise

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 18, 2011 @11:33AM from the movin'-on-up dept.

snydeq writes "Peter Wayner takes a look at several open source development projects making waves in the enterprise. From Git to Hadoop to build management tools, 'even in the deepest corners of proprietary stacks, open source tools can be found, often dominating. The reason is clear: Open source licenses are designed to allow users to revise, fix, and extend their code. The barber or cop may not be familiar enough with code to contribute, but programmers sure know how to fiddle with their tools. The result is a fertile ecology of ideas and source code, fed by the enthusiasm of application developers who know how to "scratch an itch."'"

1 of 113 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Open? Or free (as in beer)? by Jaime2 · 2011-04-18 12:09 · Score: 3, Informative

I'm not so sure.

I work for a huge company. The corporate standard for software development is Java, so you'd think there would have a bunch of open source tools in the processes. Instead, they are heavily into the Rational tools suite and run apps on WebSphere. On the other hand, my division writes software on .Net, but we use SubVersion, NAnt, NUnit, and Wix. Our tool set is frowned upon precisely because it's free. The enterprise attitude seems to be "if it doesn't cost an-arm-and-a-leg and doesn't come with an 800 support number, it can't be any good".