Sam Dean | 09 August 2018
This new ebook from The Linux Foundation provides a practical approach to establishing an open source strategy based on more than two decades of experience.
When it comes to running and managing open source in the enterprise, experience-driven advice counts for a lot. It is very likely that your organization already runs open source, but many organizations make the mistake of reacting to the open source ecosystem instead of adopting a proactive strategy that is optimized for success. That’s where the free Enterprise Open Source ebook comes in.
This new 45-page ebook from The Linux Foundation provides a practical approach to establishing an open source strategy by outlining the actions your enterprise can take to accelerate its open source efforts. The information is based on more than two decades of professional, enterprise open source usage and development and will be most beneficial to software engineering executives, development managers, compliance experts, and senior engineers involved in enterprise open source activities.
“The availability of enterprise grade open source software is changing the way organizations develop and deliver products,” the book notes. “The combination of a transparent development community and access to public source code enables organizations to think differently about how they procure, implement, test, deploy, and maintain software. This has the potential to offer a wealth of benefits, including reduced development costs, faster product development, higher code quality standards, and more.”
Proven Practices
The book outlines concrete steps that an organization can take to run an effective open source program and foster success with open source. These include the following recommendations:
- Join The Linux Foundation compliance Initiatives
- Establish relationships with open source communities
- Create or outsource open source training
- Collaborate with universities on open source R&D projects
- Join the TODO Group (Talk Openly, Develop Openly)
- Encourage internal collaboration
The ebook also makes specific recommendations for important open source workflow practices in enterprises. You’ll find discussions on:
- Visibility
- Forking
- Pull/Merge Requests
- Peer Review
- Release Early, Release Often
- Testing
- Continuous Integration
- Documentation
- Issue Tracking
This book states that strategizing and communicating are important steps in managing enterprise open source effectively: “To establish open source software as a major driving force for software development, your company needs to develop business-level objectives and fully identify any constraints faced for the use of open source software. The goal is to establish consensus and communicate business rationale behind new policies. This book will help you develop a strategy that transforms your efforts from a defensive approach that reacts to open source software to offensive market leadership that is fueled by strong open source engineering.”
Lessons Learned
The “Lessons Learned from Two Decades of Enterprise Open Source Experience” section notes that one of the most important steps an enterprise can take is to encourage a cultural shift surrounding open source.
“You’ll need to lead a cultural shift from traditional software development practices to a more open and collaborative mindset. Internal company dynamics need to be favorable to open source efforts. As an open source leader inside your organization, you will face challenges in terms of funding resources, justifying ROI, getting upstream focus, and so forth. These challenges often require a major shift in mindset and a lot of education up the chain.”
Download your free copy of Enterprise Open Source: A Practical Introduction now.