We have had both good and bad experiences outsourcing development work. Outsourced developers are terrific when you need to ramp up quickly or want to cut costs by moving development off shore where coders aren't so difficult to find and keep, and they aren't so expensive, but don't think you can simply pass off a spec to the contractor and wait for the completed application to be delivered. We have found that this is just asking for trouble.
If you plan on bringing on outsourced developers, plan that it is going to be a long term relationship. You will need to closely manage the project and monitor progress often. Standards of quality are very subjective and differ in various parts of the world. Alway get the source code for each build and don't pay for everything up front. Make payments as milestones are reached.
Also, plan for long term support of the project at the beginning of the project, not the end you will always need continuing support, and it is better to negociate terms before the project begins rather than after the project is completed.
Also, if you use off shore developers, make sure it is a local company with an off shore office so that all contracts are local and you can pay locally. Enforcing international contracts and moving currency accross borders is often more trouble than it is worth.
I tend to agree that not everything should be open sourced, but telco could benefit. Linux is an ideal platform for telephony because it can be stripped down and made very fast, it can be embedded and it is very stable. There is a great deal of telephony hardware available with opensourced drivers for Linux. Quicknet's drivers are even in the kernel starting with v.2.2.14; this is what created the heading of telephony devices in the Linux Kernel. There are even opensource VoIP protocol stacks avaialable such as OpenH323.org. This, to me, constitutes a decent platform. Now developers only need to create tha applications to sit on top, and the entire package would only cost a fraction of what a commercial system would traditionally cost. There is the opportunity to create custom, flexible call control applications for a platform that wouldn't have have a starting price of $30,000 and $250 per port like some traditional PBS's. The Opensource community would benefit by stepping back and relizing that their effort must in someway result in a marketable business solution in order to perpetuate itself, but don't discount the whole movement.
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We have had both good and bad experiences outsourcing development work. Outsourced developers are terrific when you need to ramp up quickly or want to cut costs by moving development off shore where coders aren't so difficult to find and keep, and they aren't so expensive, but don't think you can simply pass off a spec to the contractor and wait for the completed application to be delivered. We have found that this is just asking for trouble. If you plan on bringing on outsourced developers, plan that it is going to be a long term relationship. You will need to closely manage the project and monitor progress often. Standards of quality are very subjective and differ in various parts of the world. Alway get the source code for each build and don't pay for everything up front. Make payments as milestones are reached. Also, plan for long term support of the project at the beginning of the project, not the end you will always need continuing support, and it is better to negociate terms before the project begins rather than after the project is completed. Also, if you use off shore developers, make sure it is a local company with an off shore office so that all contracts are local and you can pay locally. Enforcing international contracts and moving currency accross borders is often more trouble than it is worth.
I tend to agree that not everything should be open sourced, but telco could benefit. Linux is an ideal platform for telephony because it can be stripped down and made very fast, it can be embedded and it is very stable. There is a great deal of telephony hardware available with opensourced drivers for Linux. Quicknet's drivers are even in the kernel starting with v.2.2.14; this is what created the heading of telephony devices in the Linux Kernel. There are even opensource VoIP protocol stacks avaialable such as OpenH323.org. This, to me, constitutes a decent platform. Now developers only need to create tha applications to sit on top, and the entire package would only cost a fraction of what a commercial system would traditionally cost. There is the opportunity to create custom, flexible call control applications for a platform that wouldn't have have a starting price of $30,000 and $250 per port like some traditional PBS's. The Opensource community would benefit by stepping back and relizing that their effort must in someway result in a marketable business solution in order to perpetuate itself, but don't discount the whole movement.