Top Ways to Avoid Open Source Development Pitfalls

Open source development is highly popular among the business owners that are startups and it is apparent to all that open source is a big solution for website development where they have a limited budget to work on. Since such platforms often come under the general license, users don’t have to pay a big amount for using it.

Open source comes with its huge benefits, but it too has some pitfalls, which needs to be considered. A careful study can help users to avoid them and use the platforms to deliver the best for their projects. So here in this blog, lets discuss some of the most important tips that you need to consider for the best benefits.

Know the Reason of Using an Open Source:

It is highly important to know why you are using this particular open source software and how it can benefit you. Using an open source development platform doesn’t just affect a company’s R&D organization, but it also touches various processes of the business as well, so it’s highly important to have a clear understanding of why leveraging open source is the best choice for your organization. This will help you to shape up individual actions, offer the developers with guidance and allows the company to shape its activities within the community of the open source.

Always Remember that it is Open and Not Free:

Another common misconception about open source is that it is available for free. The truth is that you can gain access to millions of codes free, but this doesn’t mean that it is a finished product. The common development tasks, which include regression testing, integration and other enhancement features that needs to be performed. Since using open source development platform allows you to redistribute where you spent your money, it balances your investment. This helps you to invest more on the innovation that you built on top of the open source codes.

 

Also Read: 5 Most Essential Open Source Tools That Web Designer Should Consider in 2020

 

Choose Your License with Care:

It is highly important to choose the licensing models and also their implications for the development work, which can be really challenging. It is good to find the worth of investment and then understand the licenses that can work best for your company and then choose the best open source development company to work on the project. However, not all licenses come under the GPL, there are two main categories which are License Contracts and permissive License Notices. These licenses are in fact less restrictive and easier for any commercial product developers to use.

 

Pick the Best Business Model:

A common open source topic is how to make money using it in a way that is also acceptable to the community. A wide range of business models are available and they can coexist by using the open source software or even by offering support services to those that are already engaged with the community. Today, a lot of companies are creating full software distributions, which are usually based on Linux and that includes a range of software, but they can be fully integrated into a usable platform.

Remember that Maintenance is not Free:

Another most important thing that you need to understand is that expecting free maintenance is not something that you should expect. Most open projects depend on communities and rely on the good will of the members. So you can have a contract with these communities to offer a service level agreement for maintenance and support and achieve the commitments for fixing bugs, defect analysis and set the bug fix priorities.

 

Also Read: Your Open Source CMS May Be Vulnerable to Cyberattacks. Switch to Sitefinity