IT Troubleshooter | Harper Mann » Open Source Outsourcing

August 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Open Source Outsourcing

TAGS: Open Source

Companies that are strong with the Open Source force gain code contributions and testing from their OS communities. This has become critical since feedback from users needs to be direct to the developers or feature requests get lost in the translation. When a bug has to travel from support -> operations -> marketing -> product management -> QA -> Eng management -> engineering -> coder, you get the telephone game effect. Avoiding this commercial vendor daisy chain is one of the underpinnings of Open Source projects that make them robust.

The smart software companies like Google and Red Hat know this and respond directly to their users. They have already made the mistake of not communicating and have suffered and learned. When you draw from the Open Source community, it’s like outsourcing in that you leverage the knowledge, interest and capability of the project team, rather than relying on yourself or our organization as the sole source of these. This is not the same as dealing with one-off tasks for customers (those that sap the energy of programmers, leaving them tired), because the Community’s stories and specs are more direct and closer to the true needs and capabilities of the users and developers engaged in the discussion. It's more efficient.

Posted by Harper Mann on August 16, 2007 04:16 PM

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