How to Evaluate Open Source Software – Evaluation Criteria

evaluation criteria for Open source softwareOpen source software which is considered as one of the best exploration for the software to the small and medium sized businesses who are looking out for cost effective solutions. Open source software is also providing advantages to those who don’t want to spend licensing amount every year on the number of users. Open source also helps you to customize the tool as per your requirements. Finally it allows you to have source code of the tool with you for further future modifications.

Let’s have a look on Open source software selection criteria:

Open source software selection criteria start from listing out with the open source packages and after listing out the best it’s now time for the evaluation of criteria. This can be followed by searching the capabilities of the tool, customizations the tool can offer, integration the tool can offer you with 3rd party software etc.

You can also further evaluate the tool on the following grounds:

  • How much the sponsoring company is stable with the financing support?
  • Under which license the open source is registered.
  • Past implementations of the vendor or the open source company.
  • Year of establishment of the product in the market.
  • Any other version provided by the product if yes then what are the feature differences comparing paid and community editions.
  • Technology and on what architect the product is based on.
  • The period where the advance version created by the firm.
  • Review of the tool on Linked in or on the Forums to judge more capabilities of the tool.

Remember it is considered Open source software as free software by many of us; kindly remember it is only free interms of the source code availability – free means freedom here.

There are development charges which need to be bear during the implementation, for this you can further go into more details such as:

  • The vendor information – Company background – the number of other products vendor is dealing with.
  • Is the Vendor partnering with the concern Open source firm, if yes what level of partnership the vendor has?
  • Number of implementation done by the vendor (clients)
  • The implementation methodology adopted by the vendor for the development and deployment.
  • What kind of costing strategy the vendor adopts. (On resource basis/ Hourly billing/ turnkey costing etc.)

There are much more points that can be explore during the actual implementation of Open source Software.

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