(note: not "the" answer... not a zealot, no axe to grind,
etc.)
For shops getting burnt repeatedly by one piece (or type)
of COTS system, how many would benefit by looking for
some FOSS packages that did the job (or a good chunk of
it) and could then be tailored to needs? Sort of taking the
usual replace-bespoke-by-COTS fashion and (to a degree)
turning it on its head. The company wouldn't even need to
worry about releasing their modified code if it was only
used internally, to my understanding of most open source
licenses (IANALNDIPOOTV). The most significant headache
would occur with change management - when the
upstream package provider released a new version,
applying some policy to merge or reject updates to the in-
house custom version. It takes a somewhat different
mindset than many corporate managers are used to
dealing with.... which I strongly suspect to be one of the
major associated risks to the entire idea.
Discussion on:
Message 9 of 1
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