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October 17, 2005

Open Source Chapter Accepted

A new book should be published next year on open source; focusing on the technical, economic, and social implications. My perspective will bring the concepts around the Open Source Repository and Governance of the environment. The goal is to ensure the basic concepts of metadata are included that make open source such a viable option in todays corporation.

Basic Rationale
This chapter is intended for individuals who will be faced with implementing and governing the open source environment in a large organization. Governing the open source environment requires more than the indemnification of the product. Open source governance requires that the organization establish architecture standards, centralized location for downloading certified open source products, tracking usage, ensuring compatibility between components, and metric applications that allow the organization to evaluate the business value to the company.
The business must drive the technology decisions and architecture should enable this activity by minimizing unintended effects on the business due to technology changes. Utilizing an Open Source repository for impact analysis will ensure that proposed changes will not create catastrophic events within the business itself. The repository provides the mechanism for inventory management which allows organizations to see what is already acquired, deployed, and supported within the environment. In addition, efforts like domain analysis, reuse, and release management are essential to the implementation of open source as an enterprise asset. When organizations embrace open source as a viable alternative to in-house or outsourced development, they must accept the responsibility and implications of transforming it from code to an asset of the corporation.

Posted by Todd at October 17, 2005 2:34 AM