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Succeeding with Open Source

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Have you been wondering how to extend the use of open source software in your organization, but would like to know how to find the right software and do pro-quality evaluations of alternatives effectively? This excellent book by Bernard Golden will show you what's different about open source in detail, how you might make those differences work in your organization, and how to use a simple, effective model that summarizes the necessary elements to compare different apps that might fit into your environment. Using Golden's methods will educate your choices, reduce your risks, and help you to succeed with open source.

This is a "How-To" book for IT managers, but it's also very suitable for beginners. The concepts don't require technical knowledge, and the explanations are clear and concise.

Part I is an overview of everything you wanted to know about open source. It dispells myths, and helps you to understand why open source works at all. Best of all, each chapter has an executive summary, and most paragraphs have a margin note that summarizes the paragraph's concept. This really makes the book easy to read or review. You can skim down the page reading the concept notes until you come to the areas where you want more in-depth knowledge. The overview is excellent.

Part II (which also includes the great paragraph notes) introduces Golden's Open Source Maturity Model, the framework for applying what you learned, or knew, from Part I, and more that you will learn later in Part II. The model is a template that grids the elements for software assessment and weighting factors. When you do the math you get the product maturity score, maturity being how full-featured and ready for production use the product is. Of course, your weighting factors will affect the score to make it useful in light of your organization. Formally scoring a number of products will pinpoint the products you should and should not be considering. This part is pretty simple.

The devil, of course, is in the details. Golden discusses different types of organizations, how they should set up their reviews, weightings and interpret scores. Then he applies this process to a real-world example using JBOSS, a significant open source product. Each element is fully explored in its own chapter, and this is where the rubber meets the road. Golden compares how commercial products provide the elements, then he discusses how open source provides the elements, many times by using different mechanisms. He gives great guidance on how to find and use these resources when they differ from the single-point solution of commercial software. If differences between open source and commercial software implementation weren't clear to you before, they will be after these chapters, and you'll begin to know how to get the most out of them, too. Open source may not be the right answer for your environment, but now you'll know exactly why, and what has to change before it is.

This is a well-written and thorough book, good for initiates and decision makers, made easy to use by the paragraph notes. If open source is on your radar, I highly recommend it.

The book is a measure of how open source has moved squarely into the mainstream. Driven by the prime example of the widespread adoption of linux by companies like IBM and HP, who merged their unix variants into it.

What Golden tries to do is show how an IT project can harness the power of open source for a commercial project. He directs the book at a sceptical IT manager who has hitherto dealt only with traditional projects. Golden explains various distinguishing traits of open source - most notably that you can build a developer community of volunteers, that is not restricted to your employee base. He suggests that properly used, open source can lead to more robust code, with quicker bug fixing cycles and perhaps, eventually, to a competitive edge.

There is a nice case study of JBoss, which makes an eponymous web container for J2EE applications. If you are using or contemplating using it, check out the chapter on it. He gives you an independent assessment of that organisation and its software.

I came at this book from a different angle - that of someone looking for resources and strategies to convince potential customers of the benefits of open source solutions. Golden's book is extremely valuable in this regard. It presents a framework (the OSMM) to assess the viability of an open source solution. It has the added benefit of managing customer expectations for me. It informs the intended audience (IT organizations) what they can reasonably expect from enterprise level open source solutions and what their responsibilities entail. In short, the author describes the underpinnings of a paradigm shift in the process of evaluating and deploying software.

I'd heard people talk about "maturity" of Open Source projects, but I was completely unaware that someone had written a formal method of assigning this maturity (OSMM, Open Source Maturity Model) until I picked up this book.

The author aims this book at the company or technical administrator who wants to be able to evaluate the Open Source software that's out there, and compare it to the commercial options. The first 60 pages or so pages go through the typical "who, what, when, where, why, how?" questions involving open source. It dispells many myths about open source software. Then it goes through implementing the OSMM on a real project (they used JBoss as their example), and through this evaluation the reader was shown steps taken in each segment of the evaluation process, a very good way of teaching to people like myself who learn by example!

There were two things about this book that made it especially appealing to me:

1. Real world examples of open source being used in successful companies. I believe the blurbs about real world successes are hugely important, and it was interesting for me to read, since I never really looked into companies who had made the leap to open source.

2. Notes. Beside many of the paragraphs there would be a short note about what the paragraph is about. So say you don't have time to read the whole chapter, but you want to get the jist of it, you can just quickly read down the page's notes, if something particularly interests you, you can read that whole paragraph. In a book such as this, I think this option for reading the book is a great asset.

The book is only a little over 200 pages, but it's quite thorough. I'd definately recommend it to people thinking of taking their company down the open source track.

Any IT Manager with their eye on the radar knows that open source software is rapidly maturing into a viable alternative to expensive commercial software packages. However, there are still some barriers to entry into the OSS world, especially for IT Managers within large, traditional, non-IT companies.

The OSMM evaluation method described in this book is a perfect fit for an IT Manager trying to find a way to justify their use of open source software inside the software stack of one of those traditional, non-IT companies.

The real-world examples provided by Bernard throughout the book are very interesting and can be used as additional "weight" to your arguments if you are trying to convince your boss that your use of OSS is no longer the pioneering adventure that it once was.

This book not only provides OSMM evaluation method, but also a well-written overview of the current status of OSS in the first three chapters.

I was not able to find blank worksheet templates on www.navicasoft.com although the book indicates that these are located somewhere on the website. I also could not find a way to upload an assessment to share with the OS community. This is a something that should be considered as it would really be a tactical advantage for IT Manager's efforts if there was a section of Navica's website dedicated to sharing OSMM assessments of the different OS packages. I can imagine that a user community would quickly spring up in response to such an portal.

Truly an excellent book!

This book is divided into 2 major sections. The first 3 chapters provide an overview of open source software, which are tailored for the CIO/CTO type of people. The rest of the book presents the Open Source Maturity Model, which helps IT managers to evaluate and select the right Open Source software for their needs.

For a commercial software product, the vendor, in most cases, is the sole provider of the software, document, training and support. This one-stop-shop approach is a double edged sword. It gives IT managers always one place to go to, but also leaves them no other alternative. On the other hand, the ownership of an open source software is distributed to various parties, including the project committee, various organizations who sponsor the project or provide training, support, or other services for the software, individual contributors and, of course, the users themselves. This decentralized nature of open source environment gives IT manager more flexibility, but also requires new skills to manage them.

At the first gaze, I found the Open Source Maturity Model is very similar to any common practice of evaluating a commercial software product. But when I read into the details of each chapter, the approach is obviously different. For example, open source software usually doesn't have the colorful product brochure, datasheet and whitepaper for IT managers to learn about the features of the product. Instead, IT managers can always download and test the software, participate in various on-line forums, or even contact the developers for information. The Open Source Maturity Model is built based on the similar concepts in the commercial world but tailored for the unique open source environment.

Last but not the least, don't miss the Preface and Introduction chapters, where the author shares his consulting experience and explains how it led him to the open source world. I found them very interesting.

This book is perhaps the best resource I've run across on the subject of evaluating open source.

In this book, Golden explains the methodology of applying his Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM). OSMM is a framework for evaluating the maturity of an open source project and its usefulness, specific to an organizations software requirements. The book provides excellent insight into the organization and culture of open source projects and provides a wealth of recommendations for investigating and evaluation open source software.

I was really blown away by the accessibility and accuracy of Golden's writing. Having been involved in open source for about 6 years in one context or another, I found his analysis of open source software to be spot-on. If you are looking for a simple, guided, and clear methodology for evaluating the usefulness and maturity of a specific open source project, you should read this book. It's a goldmine.

If you not sure what open source is all about, read this book. If you think you know about open source, then use this book to validate your understanding.

I finished reading the book over one weekend because the explanation is very clear and communicate what you need to know. I am new to open source but after reading this book, I can attend any open source seminar with more confidence.

Christmas is coming. Get your friend this book as a gift.

I finished reading an interesting book today called Succeeding With Open Source by Bernard Golden. If your company is trying to figure out how to evaluate the potential use of open source software, this would be an excellent guide to removing the emotional aspect of the debate.

Chapter list: The Source of Open Source; Open Source Business Models; Open Source Risks; The Open Source Maturity Model; The Open Source Product; Open Source Technical Support; Open Source Documentation; Open Source Training; Open Source Integration with Other Products; Open Source Professional Services; JBoss Open Source Maturity Model Assessment; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index

With the subject of open source software becoming more prevalent in corporations, it's often hard to separate logic from emotion. All the techies have strong religious beliefs on the subject. Executives are risk-adverse and want to have a "single neck to strangle" if something goes wrong. But yet, the ability to use free software that you can own and modify as needed can save huge amounts of money. How do you make a rational decision on an open source product? Bernard Golden offers a process called the Open Source Maturity Model that allows you to assess important key components of software (such as training, support, and integration) on a weighted scale based on what's important to your business. Based on how you see your company's relationship with technology (early adopter or pragmatic), you can then decide whether the software falls in a scoring range that is suitable for your needs.

In each of the chapters on the different assessment areas, the author does a good job in examining the different pros and cons of open source. For instance, documentation can be found in many different areas. There may be commercial books, forums, discussion groups, or official documentation from the vendor. These avenues can be examined to see how mature the product is in these areas, and then a score assigned. Taking this evaluation approach with all your software can eliminate much of the emotional debate and lead to well-reasoned decisions. The book uses the JBoss open source J2EE server software as an example throughout the book, so you get a feel for how this process really works. And best of all, all levels of staff will understand the material.

If you're having problems getting traction in your organization for open source usage, get a copy of this book and start a rational evaluation. It may be the missing piece you've been looking for.

This book provides analytical tools for evaluating the use of open source tools in a business context. There is no source code. No particular advocacy of any language or toolkit. This is a business book that has a positive perspective about open source, but it more about how to evaluate open source software and how it can be deployed effectively.

On the downside, the text and the topic are fairly dry, and the insistence on putting paragraph synopsis lines next to ever single paragraph in the entire book is annoying. The synopsis lines should summarize and entire page or set of paragraphs.

It's not a book for everyone. This is a book for CTOs and product managers. If you are having trouble convincing your employers or employees about the business value and quality of open source alternatives to commercial products you should have a look at this book.