Another busy week here at FierceContentManagement. Lots of big news, so much that I had my top five stories chosen by last Friday, an unusual occurrence, but you will note one clear pattern this week, the emergence of open source tools. Several of today's items involved open source projects and services, and this was on the heels of last week's Alfresco's major release of Alfresco Labs 3. It seems these are heady days for open source as more products develop and mature. It's getting to the point for many of these products that the fact they are open source is really secondary. It has less to do with the license and more to do with the quality of the product or service itself (or at least it should).

What's The Difference?

Open source projects for the most part are available for a free download. License language varies, but typically you can install it for free, and then, if you so choose, pay for maintenance and support, rather than the license itself. With commercial products, you pay an upfront license fee. This fee can be based on a number of factors, typically the number of users (but sometimes by the server or other formulas) and this expense can increase the overall cost of an implementation.

Vendors that support open source projects make their money by offering support, consulting, training, customization services and certification. Commercial firms also usually offer these services, but on top of the license fees. Beyond that, the costs of implementation are typically the same for any product installed behind the firewall. You still need to deal with design, testing, training, roll out, management and all of the other tasks associated with any enterprise software installation.

Getting Into the Code

Open source projects allow you to download the source code, and if you have gifted programmers on staff, it's possible for you to add functionality to the program, not available in the core product, and customize it for your company's needs. This means you can add functionality without waiting for an upgrade cycle that may or may not match up with your requirements. You can also hire the open source vendor or external consultants who have expertise in a particular product to customize it for you. If you enhance the program, you may have to give back to the community so they can use these new functions too (although it's always a good idea to share new ideas with the community of users and developers even if it's not required by the license).

In addition to the source code, some projects have a plug-in functionality with a programming language like Alfresco's Surf for example, you can use to create custom functions not available in the core program and again contribute them to the community to share if you wish.

Choose the Best Product

Ultimately, it's not about the licensing terms, it's really about the best product to meet your company's requirements. When you sit down to scope out a large-scale project like a content management system, you should outline your requirements, your business problems, and what you hope the new system will do to meet these needs and solve these problems.

As you go through this process, look at the products, regardless of the label that has been applied to them based on licensing language and figure out which products work best for you. - Ron