11 things you should know about open source

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Explains why this blog went MIA this week. Being a single parent (for 2 weeks) plus an unhealthy work load has this dude exhausted.

However, every cloud has a silver lining... being immersed in code all week, you can't help by being philosophical about open-source. Here's my wisdom scraped from fresh wounds.

Good: it's free

Bad: you'll probably do more customization to fit your needs, than you would for a bought product

Good: new features come up through the community pretty fast, you don't have to wait for quarterly upgrades which you probably have to pay for

Bad: the roadmap for the product isn't clear, no clear product plan, usually unpredictable

Good: if you need something, chances are someone had the same problem and already wrote a fix or an extension

Bad: the code or the feature is not always the way you think it should be written

Good: you write less code

Bad: you inherit both good and bad code with little or no standards across contributions

Good: you get to spend more time solving the business problem than building infrastructure

Bad: end-users make more demands because they know you can customize at will

Good: this is no critical point of failure because the community supports and extends it collectively

Bad: if you have to dig into the code, there is no-one within the company who can fast track you because it wasn't written internally

Good: lots of fixes and modifications available

Bad: hard to keep track of all the fixes and modifications, maintenance is an issue

Good: allows you to try with no cost other than time

Bad: end-users assume that the prototype you have built quickly is the product

Good: cost and time savings

Bad: wrong expectations are usually set because it is not zero cost, there is still the cost to learn and to extend/customize

Good: collective responsibility results in best of breed

Bad: could be bad if there is no initial strong consistent architecture

Good: lots of support from the community

Bad: no cost effective paid support if the community can't solve your problem



Bottom line: if you have a finite budget, have savvy technical people on board, open source can cut your costs by a factor of 5 in time and money.

The best part it allows you to fail fast.