Open Source Best Practices

developed differently from how corporations typically develop software. Research into how open source works has been growing steadily. 1 One driver of such research is the desire to understand how commercial software development could benefit from open source best practices. Do some of these practices also work within corporations? If so, what are they, and how can we transfer them? This article describes our experiences using open source software development practices at SAP. SAP is a major software developer and leader in business applications. We've found that open source practices can complement traditional top-down software development with bottom-up collective intelligence. Software forges offer a mechanism for advancing the adoption of open source best practices within corporations (see the sidebar, " What Is a Software Forge? "). We illustrate our experiences using SAP's own internal software forge, called SAP Forge, and compare our experiences with those from other large software companies. Eric Raymond compared most corporate software development to building a cathedral—planning, managing, and executing the carefully crafted work of skilled individuals from the top down. 2 In contrast, Raymond described open source development as a bazaar: no master plan, diverse agendas, and much redundant effort. Many open source best practices fly in the face of traditional software development methods. 3,4 For example, open source projects don't hide the source code from users; instead, they treat users as beta-testers. They also frequently release incomplete systems and, in general, don't view users as customers who expect a polished product. Rather, they empower users to become co-developers. 5 A case study by Vijay Gurbani and his colleagues shows how companies can benefit from applying open source practices internally. 6 Gurbani and his colleagues developed an internet telephony server at Lucent using an open source approach. Through multiple stages, the initial research project evolved into the backbone of multiple commercial products, all based on the same server software. Gurbani provided the server software as a shared internal asset, including the source code. Over time, several product groups contributed to the project, without any top-down companywide O ver the past 10 years, open source software has become an important cornerstone of the software industry. Commercial users have adopted it in stand-alone applications, and software vendors are embedding it in products. Surprisingly then, from a commercial perspective, open source software is Software forges are tool platforms that originated in the open source community. Many corporations are …