Transcript OPEN SOURCE and OPEN PLATFORM

OPEN SOURCE
and
OPEN PLATFORM
PROs and CONs - A Case Study
by
Cindy Zerkowski
MIS Director, Macomb County
www.MacombCountyMI.gov
October 13, 2004
Michigan Digital Government Summit
THE TIME:
2004
THE PLACE: Macomb County
THE CASE:
Should our new Web
platform be Open Source?
THE MOTIVE: $$$
GOAL
INTERNET: Web platform capable of
handling a fully transactional
environment - secure, stable, and
enterprise - class
INTRANET: DITTO - but,
also
fully integratable with network
administration and security product sets
already in use.
PRODUCT REVIEW PROCESS
PLATFORMS
APPLICATION/DATABASE ENGINE
DEVELOPMENT TOOLSET


Reviewed and Compared
Open Source and commercial/proprietary vendors
Proven technology use - a determinative criteria
MYTH vs. REALITY
 What
seems simple at the outset, gets
more complex and ambiguous as you
peel back the layers.
 While
there are thousands of choices,
only a handful can be considered
serious contenders
CONSIDER THE ANCILLARIES
 Training
 Support
 Enhancements/Upgrades
 Documentation
 Security
 Legal
Recourse
DON’T TAKE THESE FOR GRANTED
THE FINANCIAL MODEL
 Open
Source

FREE Open Source
 ZERO Down, PAY LATER
WHAT TO DO
 Test
Drive
• Stability
• Performance
• Scalability
 Look
Under the Covers
• Defect rates
• Architecture/Design
• Adaptability
Need to Answer the Question
Do you want to be in the
development business?
or
Is acquisition the better strategy?
Delivery Architecture Component
Tools/Roles
 Integrated
Development Environment
(IDE)
 Business Component/Service Modeling
 Business Process Modeling
 Source/Version Control
 Issue Tracking
 Build Environment
 Methodology
Delivery Architecture Component
Tools/Roles
(continued)
(D)HTML/XML Authoring
 Image Manipulation
 Unit Testing
 Automated System Testing
 Report Writer
 e-Commerce Development
 Aspect-oriented Programming (AOP)
 Development Database
 Miscellaneous Tools

Risk Assessment
 Training
- availability for specialty
products; expenses
 Travel
Time - vendors have staff to
work on bugs/fixes and improvements
vs. in-house staffing
 Threat
of hack attack - sooner or later
Risk Assessment
(continued)
 What
 Mix
are the vendors doing?
- and - Match
 What’s
stable? Linux? J2EE?
 Warning:
Intellectual Property legal
battles - “derivative works”
The Pendulum
CLOSED
OPEN
Q. Is Open Source nothing more than
shareware - repackaged?
A. Kind-of, if it’s free open source and, you get source code, too.