Tips for choosing Open Source Solution

Open source solutions have been a blessing for the global web community. These solutions allow the users to use, change, and improve software code and then redistribute it. It can be downloaded by anyone and then it can be customized to suit the unique business requirements.

A large number of people are involved in Open Source Software Development. This means there are minimum chances of errors as opposed to traditional source code wherein there is a possibility of developers overlooking problems.

However, there are certain important things to be considered while selecting an open source solution.

Performance and reliability are extremely important when it comes to choosing open source software. Word of mouth from trusted people can help a lot. One should always take an opinion from experience people in this field before going for open source software. Choosing software that can work with other software is also important. One can get the best out of investment.

Open source software is as much about the license as it is about development methodology. Read the license properly. Recognized open source licenses have well defined conditions for your contribution of code to the ongoing development of the software or the incorporation of the code into other packages.

An open source project should have a very clear development process that describes how contributions are made and how they are evaluated for inclusion.

You should also consider ones capability to maintain this software. If not, will you employ third party contractors or will you implement a training plan to match your skills to the task?

One should also look out that whether there is an active support community of whatever the web development company ready to answer your questions concerning deployment? Look at the project's mailing list archive, if available. If you post a message to the list and receive a reasonable reply, this may be a sign that there is an active community of users out there ready to help.