Council Post: A New Framework For CIOs To Evaluate Open Source Products
Summary
Legacy Evaluation Criteria: Insufficient In The Cloud And SaaS Era When making strategic investments to support and grow their businesses, effective CIOs choose proven products and technologies that can evolve to meet their future needs. Previously, it was easy to gauge the potential success of an open source product based on the number of contributors, contributions, downloads and like stars – information that was freely available on GitHub. The hard part is quantifying and managing the risk: Measuring the true success of open source products while they are evolving in nascent and emerging markets is difficult. A product’s universal availability via multiple SaaS and public cloud providers should instill CIOs with confidence that it is here to stay, has more paid support options and is a safe bet. When these developer “super-contributors” are affiliated with visionary or resourceful companies that have committed to driving the road map, adoption and monetization of an open source product and nurturing the community, it’s a good indicator of the product’s potential for success.