What to Know Before Choosing Open Source

Before your company commits to building an open-source software component into your enterprise infrastructure, it’s important to discern whether that project is stable and healthy enough to rely on. Here are some elements to consider, based on the experie

The software’s features must meet all functional requirements and quantifiably address your company’s service-level agreements, whether internal or external.

The open-source project must have a rich, thriving community around it, and it should be either growing or very active. It’s also important to consider how easy or hard it is to participate in that community as users or contributors—some open-source

The open-source project’s leaders should often revise and publish the project’s road map, with feedback from the open-source community and in alignment with users’ needs.

The product’s license, and the licenses of any third-party subcomponents, must be compatible with your business objectives.

The project should have one or more commercial entities providing support or at least providing indemnification to shift liability away from the company. Popular projects wind up having a federation of companies providing products and services around them

The commercial entity should be well-funded and properly insured and bonded.

If your own engineers participate in the project, there should be no conflicts of interest or licensing issues that would cause problems if they contribute back to the project. Project leads should be engineers contributing code or fixes.

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