Black Duck Blog

Phil Odence
Vice President of Business Development
podence@blackducksoftware.com
I haven’t been able to figure out who first said “Fast, Cheap, Good…pick two,” but it’s a great description of the trade-offs that exist in many projects. “Fast, Cheap, Free from Risk” doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way, however there is similar triangle trade-off that companies are facing with respect to licensing and managing use open source software.

There are three ways companies can choose to deal with open source code:

1. Open Source Uncontrolled: This approach yields productivity gains from using open source (at least in the short term) and no overhead from managing. But the consequences include IP risk from unmet licensing obligations and/or the support and expense of uncontrolled code that may get deployed in a company’s IT infrastructure.
2. Just Say No to Open Source: In this scenario, IP risk is minimized, and management is relatively straight-forward, but companies miss a big opportunity for the productivity gains that open source can provide.
3. Managed Use of Open Source: Companies gain productivity by using open source and minimize risk, but investing time to manage claws back at least some of the productivity gains.

Another one-liner comes to mind: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” True, but as is often the case, technology provides a way to get the most out of a tradeoff. By automating open source management a fourth scenario emerges that enables companies to boost productivity, reduce risk and minimize the overhead required to responsibly manage open source so you can have your three slices of cake and eat it too.