People, Quality, Management, Organization
- How is the structure in a “messy” free community?
Everybody can start a project and give away the source. This is not necessarily a good thing, often the wheel is re invented or a similar application is “rewritten” in a different language. This results in a mountain of software applications. But how do you know which is the right program? There are several websites that try to bring some structure in this. Sourceforge is a nice example, it is a hosting service for open software programs. Tens of thousands projects are hosted and a lot of information is available. Think about how much activity is being put in the project, etc. This brings a little structure, because many of those tens of thousands are just amateur projects. The larger projects often have a project team employed, they are being paid to manage the project and always have a website with extensive information on the status of the project, future developments, etc. Think about projects like Mozilla, open office, etc.
- How is the quality assured?
Quality is not assured, everybody can start a project. However when you select your software by using a website like Sourceforge, you can select a application with much effort put into it. Larger projects often have a special team who check “patches”, which are basically improvements on the current code, once these patches are approved they are being implemented in the program. Because of these checks the team can also make sure that the software works according to the goals, instead of having more features implemented than planned.
- How is the expertise regarding the complex ICT infrastructure?
Assume that the people who are working on open source projects are a mix of people who try to learn things, and top level experts who like to put effort in the projects for their own sake, or because they are being paid to do so. Especially on the larger projects where companies like IBM put effort in there is a lot of knowledge available.
- What are the different cultural priorities? (Not reinventing the wheel over and over again)
As the internet makes us able to communicate among each other over the world it’s easily possible to work on a project with someone from china for example. However there are some cultural differences. Language is the most common one, some projects have translated their software to different languages, and are asking for people all over the world to help with the translation. But often it requires understanding how users might have different viewpoints and also different approaches to solving problems, which is often a problem in software projects. The larger projects with employed managers have strict rules which are to be followed, but this is off course for internal developments. Nothing prevents someone to start a similar project because of cultural problems.
- How is software logistic distributed?
Again, the website of Source forge deals with the distribution of open source software. Off course there are more websites, but this is the most important one. Then the larger projects often have their own website on which the software is available.
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