Living with
Open Source
Software
Brian Olore and Katie Gengler
WHY DO WE
CHOOSE
TO USE
OPEN
SOURCE
SOFTWARE?
We don't want to reinvent the wheel.
We want to benefit from a community of people to help us
learn, find bugs, fix bugs and continue development.
We don't have the resources to develop the functionality we
need ourselves, so we need to tap the community (aka we want/need it free!)
"There are more smart people that don't work for you than
do."
* Heard at a conference talk. I can't remember who said it, but it's a great point. If you know who said
it, please let me know.
Or, my perspective as a developer, in most scenarios:
"Someone must have done this before and I bet they did it better than I
would."
Fear of dependencies we can't maintain or improve.
WHERE DO I
FIND
Open Source?
Github (1M+)
Google Code (250k+)
Sourceforge (350k+)
Rubyforge
PEAR
CPAN
GOOD NEWS & BAD NEWS:
There are a ton of open source projects!
Does it claim to do what I'm looking for?
What's the license?
Does it work?
Are there tests?
When was the last commit?
How many contributors are there?
Is there a community? A body of knowledge?
How long has the project been around?
What are the open issues?
What are its dependencies?
Do I know enough to contribute to or take over this project, if ever necessary?
Is there a company that will provide support?
Is there documentation? Does it agree with the code?
How long ago was the last release?
Oooh, look!
A shiny new version!
This is perfect ...almost
CONTRIBUTE
TO THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY