Thursday, November 28, 2013: Open source technologies have taken big leaps in the recent past. Even government agencies have started moving to open source platforms. There are platforms like the Red Hat Linux operating system, the Red Hard JBoss application platform, the Apache HTTP Server, Oracle MySQL database and many more. The Apache HTTP Server is the most successful open source platform in the public sector today.
While those mentioned above are quite popular and known, there are other platforms too. But, there are certain things that you need to keep in mind when choosing a platform for open source projects. Here’s what you must watch out for.
1) Open source stack credibility: It is important to ensure that the open source stack has come from a credible source. While some open source communities don’t follow this to the letter, the best ones do. You can’t pass off just anything on something like Apache, but you can on other lesser known communities. It is always better to go with a platform that ensures that good quality projects will be the only one to pass.
2) Support and services: The biggest open source vendors all put a lot of emphasis on support and services. They employ a good and big team of engineers who are capable of delivering innovations quickly. The commercial customers that a company has can point you towards the best. Good companies always work with the best vendors.
3) Taking advantage of open standards: Not every open source vendor is able to take advantage of the open standards fully. Choosing the wrong vendor in this aspect could lead to vendor lock-in.
4) Mobile capacity: When you’re choosing an open stack, make sure that it has good mobile capabilities. This ensures that the stack will be useful in the future as well. A good platform is that which has the capacity to use text, images, videos and other aspects of mobile components. In addition, it must also be able to automatically convert these into compatible models for smartphones, desktops, digital publications, tablets etc. This makes it futureproof.
5) Value: The fact that you are saving a lot of money on software costs is not the only value that open source can provide. It shouldn’t be enough either. Make sure you use the open standards correctly in order to get the most value.
