Week 2 - Development Process Model of OOS

Software development: Open-source for you?

http://www.sdmagazine.com/documents/s=731/sdm0105a/0105a.htm?temp=VbkuXK04JH

Open-source Software (OSS) is a hot topic in the recent years. Linux, Apache, Samba and OpenOffice.org are some of the successful case. According to the article, there were 16,500s open source projects undergoing in 2001. The latest statistics must much more than that today. The number is rising greatly, too.

What is the Software development methodology that? It depends on its popularity. More people get attention on the software, more developers join the development, so called “inspired hacking" to "software engineering.". In short, the development of the software depends greatly on its popularity and finally it gets more resources and more likely to be success to launch into the “market”.

The development procedures or the methodology of OSS is greatly different from the ordinary software development methodology. The development of software depends on the developers who need to act as developer, programmer, tester and analyst! In addition, most of the developers are hired in the in-house software development company. They use their own time to develop, monitor and debug the software.

One interesting example from the Borland, the software vendor company of Turbo Pascal and Turbo C in the good old days, find the open-source community to help them to develop a database system called the Interbase. They are surprised by the efficient and the profession. The software were found the security risks while the whole in-house developers can’t find any.

The other benefit gain from the OOS community is the ultimate man-power. As Borland's Shelton says: "We talk about them as wild-eyed, hairy independents, but a lot of developers have corporate jobs during the day, and do open source on their own time. Corporate developer by day, Spider-Man by night."

Is OOS is the utopia for the whole industry? Well, for the computer game developer it may not a potential market since the market share is small. Small profit for the big investment business is a risk to keep their development.

The impact to the in-house software company is great too. We can imagine that the traditional development of software may last for 8 months by RAD. the OOS community may finish the similar product within 3 months. How can the traditional software house earn the profits?

I think the software vendors should no longer be the software manufactories. They should also be the service providers to the clients beside the problem-solution providers. The add-on values can make money nowadays, as we can see the successful story from Red-Hat and Mandrake.

Remark:
http://www.apple.com/opensource/