Application Development managers spend their careers wrestling with what many believe are the inevitable tradeoffs between cost, schedule and features. Listen closely to the regular development staff meetings and you’ll hear things like: “I can deliver on schedule but need to drop some functionality to make it” or “we’ll deliver the desired functionality but we can’t make the schedule, or we will make the schedule but we’ll be over budget because we’re using more people than planned.” To some, managing these three essential tradeoffs is an art, to many it’s a science, regardless successful companies invest a lot in making it work. Over the past few years, it looks like a silver bullet is emerging that doesn’t force the traditional tradeoffs….

One of the highlights of the LinuxCon2010 conference was Jeff Hammond’s presentation on open source adoption in the enterprise. Jeff, a former IBM Rational product manager and long time devotee of developers, was talking about the his latest survey data showing that open source in the enterprise had arrived, “crossed the chasm” and was being widely adopted. As part of the reason why, Jeff explained that open source delivered value to dev teams that hit on all three elements of cost, schedule, and features, what he called the “software ‘iron triangle’”, and did so simultaneously, making open source a “silver bullet.”

Jeff Hammond, Forrrester Research LinuxCon 2010

It seems to defy the laws of physics at some level, but let’s look at an example. Using open source components in a web application, dev teams can employ an authentication framework or a database ORM to replace internal code, which saves coding resources. It also shortens the project schedule and can increase the feature set delivered since the dev team can shift time and effort from developing commodity code to adding differentiating features most highly valued by customers.

There’s a lot of research lately showing that open source is changing how Enterprises develop software. Reinforcing much of what Jeff Hammond presented at LinuxCon 2010 is a recent Accenture survey that said open source is changing the business operates its IT function. If open source can relieve some of the traditional tradeoff around the “software iron triangle,” it sure seems like IT would be embracing it.

We see that happening at many of our customer’s shops, what’s it like in your shop?

It was an upbeat event and well attended (approx. 600). The Linux Foundation announced their Open Compliance Program (OCP) as well as the v1.0 beta of a new OSS data exchange standard called SPDXTM. Black Duck contributed content to the compliance program – we were referenced in Jim Zemlin’s keynote presentation — and has been a major contributor to the SPDX standard.

Some people asked if the OCP announcement is good for us. We believe what’s good for OSS is good for us and this is clearly good for open source. At the highest level, it serves to build awareness for the need to manage and control open source and, yes, Black Duck will benefit by supplying tools to automate those processes. We issued our own press release.

Paula Rooney of Ziff-Davis wrote a good article on SPDX.

From an attendee’s perspective there was a lot of buzz around Android, which I attribute to its meteoric success (in Q2 it has #3 market share world wide for smartphones ahead of Apple, behind RIM). That success led to some heated discussion in one of the sessions between members of the mainstream Linux kernel community and Android/Google proponents around some of the power saver features in Android (“wakelocks”) that have not made it into the mainstream Linux kernel.

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center gave a passionate presentation on “current legal issues in FOSS.” He first acknowledged that we have proven that open source and commercial companies are not inconsistent. He then focused on the next big issue, software patents, which he is against (we believe the system can be improved), and how he believes the concept impedes innovation. Whether you agree with Eben’s views or not, you can’t argue that he is an exceptional speaker. He received a standing ovation, not something I’ve seen at a Linux event before!

Forrester’s Jeff Hammond delivered a keynote presentation on open source software in Enterprise IT. Jeff’s overall message was that in Enterprise IT open source has “Crossed the Chasm” and is now widely adopted and receiving management support. Jeff reviewed a number of case studies (a number from companies that use Black Duck), including a financial service company that demonstrated per project software costs savings from OSS that range from 30% to 80%. He also featured Sabre, a travel reservation service provider that has saved millions of dollars using OSS.

Sabre’s software acquisition policy reflects the enthusiasm I sensed at the show: “OSS first, buy next, build last.”

Were you there, what were your impressions?

Accenture’s survey of executives at 300 large organizations in both the private and public sector found that 69 percent expect to increase OSS investment in 2010. More than a third said they plan to migrate mission-critical software to open source in the next twelve months.

The reasons for greater use of OSS cited by respondents also point to a maturing market place. Cost savings have historically been the prime motivator, but that’s changed according to Accenture’s findings. Respondents cited software quality, improved reliability and better security/bug fixing as the top benefits, pointing to the growing strategic value of OSS. In their December 2009 Climate Change report, the 451 Group found that not cost but flexibility was the #1 benefit cited by open source user.

The survey is chock full of useful information and worth checking out (the press release includes download links to access reports), but Black Duck’s research and client experience counters one of Accenture’s conclusions. Referring to remaining roadblocks to OSS use, Accenture’s analysis indicates that “training developers how to use open source” remains one of the biggest challenges to greater adoption. Black Duck has found quite the opposite. Developers have been and continue to be the trail blazers and early adopters of OSS – also the chief advocates for more widespread usage across the enterprise. If you listened to our webinar with SAP, you would have heard that grass-roots developer efforts contributed to the sea change on OSS policy. In fact, what we’ve seen is many developers and development organizations have been increasing OSS use for quite some time, but due to a lack of corporate support – any many times in the face of policies against using OSS – developers have no mechanism to report or use OSS in secret.

Lack of senior management support and awareness is the main barrier, not developers. Once senior management becomes aware and accepts the fact that OSS plays a crucial role in the development process, the next logical step is to develop policies for usage, licensing, monitoring, reporting and contributing back to the community. These are the areas where we’ll see the next steps in the evolution of open source software in multi-source development.

For more perspectives on the Accenture survey, check out Dana Blankenhorn’s blog post (Accenture hands open source a hockey stick). You can also get perspectives on growing usage of OSS from Red Monk’s Stephen O’Grady in a blog post I wrote based on Stephen’s recent presentation at Black Duck (The Rise of Open Source).

What’s your take on the remaining barriers to greater OSS usage?

Francis Ip, head of SAP Global Technology Legal Compliance, spoke on the increasing role of open source at SAP:

“With the continuously increasing importance of open source globally and SAP’s recent strategic change towards systematically utilizing benefits that come with open source, it was necessary for us to scale our open source process through further automation…. The Black Duck Suite will help us further automate and scale our open source process in order to support our open source strategy.”

We recently recorded a webinar with SAP which reviewed the benefits that open source holds for development organizations, the management challenges it presents, and approaches for addressing these challenges. In addition, SAP described how their use of open source evolved from managing open source as an exception, to making it an integral part of their multi-source development approach, to becoming the third-largest corporate code contributor to the Eclipse Foundation.

To view our 60 second webinar on “Open Source as a strategic Business Enabler: A Case Study with SAP, please click here.

To view the full length version head to www.blackducksoftware.com/60second.

To stay update with all of our latest news, follow us on twitter @black_duck_sw or find us on Facebook.

One might wonder why first question is even being asked. The answer is there are few large, commercially successful OSS companies (like Red Hat). Many OSS advocates hope for more successful commercial companies to ensure its continued success and innovation. Stephen referenced a recent article called “Open Source Needs To Have An Unfair Advantage to Succeed” written by the CEO of cloud start-up Eucalyptus, Marten Mickos. In it Mickos said that “for an open source company to become commercially successful, it needs to have an unfair advantage against its competition.” Mickos advocates for continued experimentation with OSS business models, including “open core” as a strategy for continued innovation.

Another reason some are asking if “open source is over” is that by one metric, Google search volumes, some pretty important OSS projects appear to be declining. Stephen had data going back to 2004 showing the search volume of each of the components of the LAMP stack has declined by more than 50% (Refer to Apache Chart below).  Gadzooks, is open source over?!!

According to O’Grady, not only is open source not over, it hasn’t begun to sratch the surface of its potential. Search volume trends for the rising stars of open source– “android,” “linux cloud,”and “nosql” – have more than doubled in the last few years and are on a steady increase with no sign of slowing down. While Stephen didn’t say it explicitly, the reason for the decline in search volume of the LAMP components appears to be “maturity,” widespread awareness and adoption! People don’t need to search for “Microsoft;” they just know where to find it. And the same is becoming the case for LAMP components.

Stephen has a valuable perspective on open source directions and trends. In a recent blog posting entitled, “Frictionless Computing: What it Means for Infrastructure,” he argues that in addition to the increased availability of applications via marketplaces (Apple’s iTunes, Ubuntu’s Software Center, Android Market, etc.), the availability of code and data contribute significantly to frictionless (easier) computing. Black Duck contributes to the community and to making computing easier with our Koders.com code search website. It has over 3 billion lines of code and is used by tens of thousands of developers a day. There’s little doubt in our mind that Stephen is right: computing is getting easier, open source is not over, it’s just beginning. What do you think?