CIO Australia: The New Open Sourcing

“Open source has many allures: no licence costs, a wide range of
support venues and the ability to work directly with code for
customization or quick repairs. But it can create IT headaches,
too: The mantra of open source has been ‘release early and often,’
which means IT managers using a disparate group of open-source apps
face frequent updates and patches, and must craft rules about how
and when to apply them. Most enterprises soon find that with the
do-it-yourself approach, maintenance and integration costs
equal–and sometimes exceed–the maintenance cost of commercial
software, due to the in-house resources needed to track, test, and
apply patches and updates. The other option, using professional
services firms to do that work, costs at least as much…”

Complete
Story