Time to Market – In most cases the impact is positive. However, there are times when you can become dependant upon modifications that can delay the release of certain features.
Product Quality – In general the quality of Open Source products is at least as good as that of the most popular commercial products in some cases better. I personally haven’t experienced lesser quality.
Support Issues – My experiences are that this has neither had a positive or negative impact on the support or supportability of the product or service. The support still surrounds the IP that is being developed using the OS software.
Competitiveness/Value proposition – In general using OS software allows the engineering and product staffs to focus on being more competitive adding the right feature and functions more quickly.
Release Planning -- As I said earlier in most cases using OS has a positive impact on release planning. However, there are times when you can become dependant upon modifications that can delay the release of certain features.
Unforeseen Benefits / Complications –
Complications -- While licensing is often “free” there is a need to closely review each of the agreements to ensure that the language concerning sharing of changes does not include derivative products, potential patent infringement clauses, etc.
Benefits – The us of OS products can give you access to a large and diverse group of developers that are looking for unique challenges that can help you address issues that may not be directly related to their offerings.

posted January 7, 2007

Our business has been affected positively, by the deluge of licensing opportunitues and the opportunity to educate clients about what open source really is, and how it's changing the IP world. Most companies believe their code is "clean," but talk to any programmer in your office and he'll tell you that even code over which your company maintains propriety contains open source. As attorneys, we have learned to embrace it, but it took some time. Now, we find the change progressive and exciting.

Open Source over time will underscore the phrase, "MANY EYES MAKE SHALLOW CODE." Essentially, this will benefit even those companies that do not support an open source model. We have learned to harnass the power of Open Source for our clients and still create forms of propriety.

Links:

• http://www.redhat.com

Tsan A also suggests this expert on this topic:

• Kate S

posted January 7, 2007

For commercial developers using open source components, my experience has been analogous to a the caffeine jolt you get from free soda at work. There is this initial rush of productivity, followed by a period of lethargy. The net result is probably positive, but the competitive question is: if everyone is using the same components, who's actually getting the most value, and what are they doing?

Integrating an open source component into your product will probably make you code complete faster (and by implication reduce your time to market). However, this should be treated as any software integration project, you need to have a process for evaluating and integrating the pieces. You should have some high level process for looking at the code, assessing security risks, and keeping up with the latest version. Usually, strong ownership by a senior engineer is ideal.

You also need to have QA processes integrated into the use. You need to have an acceptance level test, and hopefully a functional suite that resembles what your product will actually do to the code.

If you don't do these two things, the long term costs of integrating open source are potentially risky. You run into all the usual bad-software problems like living on stale branches, features that do not use the API correctly, a nagging set of minor problems that engineering defers but is acidic to the bottom line because of support costs.

The final choice should be based on a careful self-assessment of the organization. Are you the type of company that would copy code simply to chop time off the schedule? If you added something that written in a different language, could you add expertise in that area or find a way of controlling the risk as a black box?

Ultimately, each organization needs to carefully ask themselves the right questions and come to the right decisions for themselves. But be warned, there does seem to be a lot of useful code out there, and companies that successfully integrate open source (or reform themselves to be able to) will have a significant advantage in both time to market and overall customer value.

posted January 7, 2007

[1] Faster time-to-market
[2] Overall open source software quality is good, ofeten better than most commercial software.
[3] Support has always been quick and good, except for an application almost unmantained where we had fix the code ourselves.
[4] We can often offer the best solutions at affordable prices so this gives us a competitve advantage over most companies still relying only on commercial products

posted January 8, 2007

[1] Impacted the time-to-market of your company's products and services?
Yes, building on top of already existing applications/frameworks reduces time-to-market as we don't need to reinvent the wheel
[2] Affected your overall product quality?
Possibly, though not drastically.
[3] Created or alleviated support issues for your business?
Hard to say.
[4] Affected your product or service's competitiveness, feature set, value proposition, etc.?
Yes, in a positive way for multiple reasons. Less development time because of solid framework and software already available. Lots of features ready to be used.
[5] Complicated or simplified product planning and release cycles?
Complicated and simplified. In most cases simplified. The only complication is when a new version of software or framework becomes available while in the middle of a development cycle, or worse when just nearing the end of a development cycle.
[6] Created any other unforeseen challenges and / or benefits?
Only really unforeseen thing is as answered in [5], possible release of a new version of the software or framework just as we're approaching the end of the development.

posted January 8, 2007

1* Made it faster since we often dont build in-house but integrate well-tested components.
2* Quality is better since we focus on less # of components that we actually build
3* Open source support (depending on the software) has been terrific and most of the problems we faced had been faced by someone earlier and we were able to use that experience.
4* We were able to offer more features.
5* Neither in my case
6* Ability to use features we were not competent to build (given resources, time, etc)

posted January 8, 2007

[1] Impacted the time-to-market of your company's products and services?

It's of course was a tremendous accelarator. It was available, the source code, documentation and expertise were all available -- it just made it possible for us to develop and extend our product.

[2] Affected your overall product quality?

The availability of talented Software and QA engineers versed in Open Source technologies made it possible to promptly develop and quickly release something of pretty high quality. Open Source tools, environment and associated development methodologies helped us deliver something of quality

[3] Created or alleviated support issues for your business?

Openess makes support something easier to implement: we were able to enhance the supportibility back the core software infrastructure of our product is Open Source.

posted January 9, 2007

Unfortunately in my company it seems that Open Source is still seen as a little suspicious.
I'm fortunate enough to able to use Open Source software individually, so my answers are on an individual basis.

{1] Open Source has negated the time taken for IT to organise purchasing, testing and approval for even the simplest products.

[2] Not only has it meant we can find decent solution for managing media etc in a limited amount of time, but even switching to Firefox has increased my productivity.

[3] Not that I'm aware of.

[4] Not applicable at present.

[5] Not applicable at present.

[6] Using Open Source programmes for both company and private projects has meant that it is far easier for me to trasnfer my knowledge and skills between both areas.

posted January 9, 2007

[1] Improved. We can offer functionality that we could never develop on our own.
[2] Neutral - positive: More people working on things makes them better; Negative: more people hacking makes it hard to sort the good from the bad.
[3] Neutral - our customers understand the parts we pass through and accept them for their intrinsic value.
[4] Positive - we can offer our customers value in our proprietary offerings where they make sense and in open source where it is more economical. We can leverage open source into our value proposition without having to charge for it - we add our own value.
[5] Not effect.
[6] No real surprises - industry experience with open source is pretty mature, there's lots of history to recognize and mitigate the risks.

posted January 13, 2007

Hi William, we would not exist without it. Our company was started by a couple of guys in college who didn't have a lot of start-up capital. Open source allowed the creation of our software with virtually no capital invested up front. I think open-source allows for a higher quality software. Bugs are fixed quickly by the network of developers who are constantly finding issues and submitting updated code instead of waiting for the next release of higher-priced solutions where then and only then the updated code will be released to the public. My 2-cents.

Brandon M also suggests this expert on this topic:

• David R

posted January 13, 2007

[1] Quicker delivery because existing code bases can be leveraged.
[2] Less code to independently test, more testers on code base = higher quality.
[3] Unchanged.
[4] Increased competiveness. Raises the bar.
[5] Neutral.
[6] Engage with community, increases professional network, presents new opportunities.

posted January 13, 2007

While I support the open source community, and believe that there are many advantages to doing so, it is important to recognize that "open source" doesn't exactly mean "free." You may not have to pay for the basic code, but integration and customization necessarily entail expense for those seeking solid solutions and robust applications. Perhaps the greatest advantage to open source is the fact that, if there is a large contingent of developers around a specific program, it provides great flexibility in expanding and creating applications to suit one's needs. Bill Gates cannot say no to you and the power rests in a community of genuinely dedicated developers.

Irwin K also suggests this expert on this topic:

• Shawn S

posted January 13, 2007

Irwin Kramer said 'it is important to recognize that "open source" doesn't exactly mean "free."' I think what needs to be added is free means freedom of choice not just zero cost. That concept of choice has given my business the flexibility and growth potential that proprietary software just cannot. I use several open source operating systems including openSuse 10.2 and Mandriva 2007-64. In addition, the applications that are available are in many cases either more robust or further on the cutting edge than closed applications. I daily use the statistics package "R". I have modified the source to provide calculations that I just couldn't get otherwise especially in any canned stats package. In a word, open source has made my business successful.

posted January 13, 2007

My answers do not specifically answer your questions but may provide a different perspective. There is an over abundance of open source products today in almost all realms from Open Office (which is a great substitute to Microsoft) to tools for Project Management, CRM, Mail, Groupware and so on. The biggest challenge is identifying which one would survive. Please keep in mind that it is very easy to implement any of the solutions, the challenge in most cases is that once you have selected a solution it is 5 times more difficult to migrate.

As long as you have a good internal team or a service partner who reviews the alternatives and puts in place the right solution you can get enormous cost benefits in terms of controlling your licensing costs as you grow.

Each of these issues that you have mentioned can work either way to a great advantage or disadvantage depending upon the specific open source software selected.

posted January 14, 2007

DISCLAIMER: I am a huge proponent of Open Source software and have dedicated significant resources and time to several projects over the years. You can consider my feedback biased, but it is based on a decade of experience.

[1] Impacted the time-to-market of your company's products and services?

Leveraging existing Open Source technologies has exponentially accelerated our delivery of services and products.

[2] Affected your overall product quality?

We are an unusual group in that we're basing our offerings on an emerging platform that is still under active development. This has pressured us into managing our own local fork of the base platform in order to have reasonable quality control and change management.

[3] Created or alleviated support issues for your business?

Over the last 20 years I have not witnessed a variance between support for commercial software or support for Open Source software. However the edge goes to Open Source, as you are at least enabled to look beyond the vendor for help.

[4] Affected your product or service's competitiveness, feature set, value proposition, etc.?

We have quite specific advantages as a result of our choice for the core platform. As well we can offer solutions that are less expensive than our competitors - significantly lower costs both initially and over time.

[5] Complicated or simplified product planning and release cycles?

Our choice has complicated things for us, as we've chosen a platform that is pretty active. However as we've dedicated ourselves to that platform, we're quite active in its development as well - so it is less a risk for us than a "complete outsider."

[6] Created any other unforeseen challenges and / or benefits?

One challenge is overcoming the ignorance and distrust of Open Source due to proprietary vendors' FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Commercial organizations can leverage this software and protect their own assets; and they just need to take the time to study the licenses of the software involved.

I'd also like to add one more thing here, perhaps this is how the question could have been worded:

[7] "How has open source software shown you what organizations are a good fit, and what organizations are a bad fit?"

If your strategy is to leverage existing applications and outsource your technology competence, then Open Source will be a difficult opportunity for you to benefit from. However if you are a technology-savvy business, or have significant investment in technologies staff, then you should be taking to Open Source like fish to water.

In short you need to have a DIY (Do It Yourself) mentality to really reap the benefits of Open Source technologies. At the very least you need enough internal staff to ensure successful implementation and ongoing care and feeding of those systems.

posted January 14, 2007

Has had no impact whatsoever. We continue to use MS products.

posted January 14, 2007

I use a lot of OpenSource stuff, in the dev stack itself (such as NHibernate, CastleProject, prototype.js, Script.acol.us, and perhaps some more), as well as surrounding stuff (subversion, etc.).
The main benefits is that I need not to "re-invent the wheel", while not bounding myself to a vendor who might close the product.
I can also make changes to the code so it would fit my needs. for example: for web development I use Castle' MonoRail (a RoR port for .NET). I needed to allow a specific behaviour that in regular WebForms would have cost me the use of special UserControls, HttpModule and configuration, for each project who needs that behaviour. Since MonoRail is opensource, I was able to change the view-engine itself, and embed this behaviour so all of the projects can enjoy it now right at kickoff.
So it might cost you a little more to choose the right solution, and you might have a steaper learning curve for new developers who are not familiar with the solution, but you gain a productivity boost that outweigh those things quite easily.

posted January 15, 2007

[1] yes, the availability of certain solutions has greatly reduced time-to-deployment or time-to-market for products and client solutions.

[2] enhanced it. overall, i was able to do *more* with *less* since i had more time and/or budget available to enhance other aspects of products.

[3] this varies. open source can require more support time initially, especially if such a solution was customized for a client. unfortunately, many open source solutions are scantily documented.

[4] yes but only in a positive way.

[5] simplified planning and release cycles since solutions were already in place that worked as is or worked with customization.

[6] a few - namely in the area of support and integration. however, so far, nothing too bad.

posted January 15, 2007

It has lowered cost of deployment. Better transparency and security.

It's just better.

posted January 15, 2007

I've answered at the URL below.

Simon.

Links:

• http://headwestsimon.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/open-source-on-linkedin/

posted January 15, 2007

Not to reiterate most of the other answers I agree with on this page...
OSS built our business. With no licensing fees and provided us a platform which was generally more secure than paid alternatives. Also, we did not have the budget starting out to pay for the punative fees charged by the competing MS products. OSS tends to fix security problems much faster, making us a more difficult hacking target. With the many available APIs and libraries, we were able to conentrate on the actual meat of the application, rather than the mundane.

Links:

• http://snowboards-for-sale.com/?linkedin

posted January 16, 2007

6. One can waste a lot of time evaluating packages that are dead in the water, merely limping along, or feature-incomplete. One must look for active projects with large user bases.

posted January 17, 2007

Using open source components in a product saves time and money, enabling shorter time to market and lower production cost. If you use open source components, make sure the group that creates the os product is cooperative. I've seen groups that refused to incorporate improvements or even bug fixes that we made, to the open source product. We use open source components from groups that are happy to work with their users and encourage us to feed our fixes and improvements and extensions to their product.
Of course, open source components are supportive to your products, you should not put your core competences (your core product) in open source unless open source is your business model.

posted January 17, 2007

5 and 6. Open Source provides good opportunities but also raises interesting questions about ongoing support that need to be seriously considered.

posted January 19, 2007

The two main benefits for us are an outgrowth of the broad base of users good open source products attract.

First and foremost, it is much easier to attract good employees (at lower wages, even) when using open source, because of the number of people available with experience.

Also, I've found that when we use well-established OSS tools with a solid release history, good documentation is prolific, and even answers obscure problems may often be found via Google. I have not had the same success with closed source applications, or even bleeding edge open source software, in large part because the user-base is smaller.

posted January 19, 2007

[1] Impacted the time-to-market of your company's products and services? -- Incredibly higher velocity

[2] Affected your overall product quality?
-- Incredibly higher quality

[3] Created or alleviated support issues for your business?
-- Alleviated, though not without caveats @see #6

[4] Affected your product or service's competitiveness, feature set, value proposition, etc.?
-- Our value proposition is unmatched. We open our source to our customers, and all our customers benefit from the ever enhanced feature set and stability.

[5] Complicated or simplified product planning and release cycles?
-- Simplified dramatically, again, not without caveats @see #6

[6] Created any other unforeseen challenges and / or benefits?
-- We reap incredible rewards from open source because we swallow the entire 'pill'. Continuous Integration, unit testing, and specifically automated builds using Maven dramatically impact our velocity and quality. That is not to say that you have to go all the way, but it is the same as anything else in life, the higher the risk, the higher the reward.

posted January 19, 2007

a. On the operations front
Could build tools driven processses without much investment
Reduced cost of setting up initial systems in place

b. On the product front
Reduced time and cost to market
Made my product more robust

On the sales front
Enabled ease of integration
reduced barriers to sales ( Free app server, db)

posted January 20, 2007