Open source software (OSS) is computer software provided under a license that permits developers to study, change, and improve the software for free. A report by Standish Group states that adoption of open source software models has resulted in savings of about €58 billion per year to consumers. Unlike commercial software, which is developed with a business motivated commitment to provide support and updates, OSS technologies are most often developed in a public, collaborative, and loosely-coordinated manner. This has important implications for the quality of different OSS technologies, as well as the level of support that different OSS communities provide to software developers.
While there are several high quality and mature OSS projects that deliver stable and well-documented products, which often involve a vibrant expert and user community providing support both in answering user questions and in addressing reported defects in the software, there are also many OSS projects that are dysfunctional due to one or more of the following:
+ The development team behind the OSS project invests little time in further development and support
+ Development of the OSS project has been discontinued due to lack of commitment or motivation
+ Documentation is limited or of poor quality making the software difficult to understand and to update
+ The community around the OSS project is small, questions receive late/no response, and defects get repaired slowly or ignored
Consequently, developing new software systems by reusing existing OSS components raises challenges in:
+ Searching for OSS candidate components
+ Evaluating and selecting the most suitable OSS components from amongst identified candidates
+ Adapting selected OSS components to fit specific requirements of new software products and services
Solving these challenges brings about substantial benefits to European software developers, but also overall within Europe’s increasingly digital community as the reuse of OSS technologies brings important savings in development, which enables increased investment in unique and forward looking innovations for enterprise and individuals.
