Big software companies are buying into it, and almost every organization today has some stake in it. Industry experts agree, and there’s no denying it now– open source has taken over software and will continue to do so for many more years.
But just because it’s become ubiquitous doesn’t mean enterprises are jumping into it blindly. As a matter of fact, many enterprises today are becoming more and more aware of their options and are becoming more scrupulous when it comes to choosing open source software. This has become particularly evident due to current changes in open source licensing, which have caused adopters to have second thoughts about their open source choices.
And while many proprietary software may now contain some open source aspects, they still remain proprietary and dominant in the market, mostly because they’re so well embedded in enterprises.
Given these factors it would be beneficial for open source projects to take a closer look at how they’re doing and what they could still do to attract more adopters and enterprises. Apart from the basic functionalities of the software what exactly are enterprises looking at now, about which open source projects should be concerned?
- If they’re really open source. Enterprises are becoming more aware that just because a piece of software is being labelled “open” that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s open source. A lot of these can be “open washed” or just open core, but are not truly open source. Several software products have open source licensed source code in their core, but are essentially still proprietary. Others claim to be “open”, but have none of the advantages or freedoms that open source software have.
- The size of the community around open source projects. Communities form a big part of what makes open source software better than proprietary ones. With a large, fully-engaged community there are often more commits, more support and more innovation– things that can definitely attract enterprises.
A large community also means there are more eyeballs looking at the code, which in turn means lesser chances of bugs. In the wake of the Heartbleed incident in 2014, the cause of which was primarily the lack of developers actually looking into the code, people now know just how important community support really is. - License types. Open source licenses matter, and companies today are looking into them more closely. Many companies now have entire legal teams looking into open source licenses, reviewing the acceptability of each one and removing those app dependencies with licenses they deem unacceptable.
Enterprises aren’t just looking for open source parts to complete their operations. They want security and reliability, as the core of their operations can depend heavily on these open source software.