Efficient way to accomplish the enterprise goals using open source software(OSS)

What is Open Source software?

Open Source software is a software in which the source code is available for anyone to do modification or customise for their purpose. Developers who have access to a computer program's source code do changes in that program by adding features to it.

What drives open source adoption?

• Access in deployment

• quality

• Freedom from vendor lock-in

• Ease in development

• Customisability

• Security

Operational Challenges

The software architect MUST look into the operation challenges that come along while using the OSS like -

• Code Quality

• The community behind the OSS

• Ability to get support from their forum

The developers always look for an easy way out by copy and paste of the code but it is important for the architect to look into every piece of code that affect their proprietary code and the final outcome.

The enterprise MUST have their own local repository that keeps daily check-in check-out.

Regulatory Compliances

It is import to meet the obligations of regulations that may be affected by the use of open source code. It is mostly an integral part of the applications that interact with critical business data. In case the team has lack of visibility into what the code is doing and how it works can represent a major control oversight of the data and create regulatory exposure. In addition, the way development team of your enterprise integrates open source with proprietary code can affect IP ownership.

This is specially important when outsourcing the development of their softwares who are using the OSS. A recent survey from North Bridge and Black DUCK says, “50% of the companies have no formal policies for selecting and approving open source code”.

The efficiency of the team can be multi-fold by making right use of OSS in their software.

Happy coding.