Open source development is a process that incorporates peer reviews and process transparency at every stage of the development lifecycle.  Open source development is based on the premises of reliability, flexibility, and most importantly, no commercial lock-ins. Open source development further adheres to these guidelines, as laid down by the Open Source Initiative (OSI):

• Free redistribution
• Inclusion of source code
• Allows modification of the code
• Inclusion of versioning in each author’s contribution
• No discrimination against groups or persons
• No discrimination against specialized field of each contributor
• No need for license distribution
• Licensing must be product, software, and technology independent

Open source development products have found their places in operating systems, databases, applications, programming languages, etc. Typical examples of open source software include Linux, MySQL, Apache, Perl, Python, etc. Open source development promotes more innovation and flexibility when compared to “closed source projects, and the presence of several global open source communities and advocates ensure that the open source movement touches one and all. Open source software development works similar to its closed source counterpart. The stages are:

1. Concept development
2. Bootstrapping and constructing the initial framework
3. Planning the early development stages
4. Early adoption with setting of baselines
5. Actual development phase begins
6. Maturity of the product is reviewed and reached with the help of patches and defect management
7. Product goes mainstream

The first question that probably comes to mind is “Why open source?” Open source development not only impacts developers and project managers, but every individual in the value chain of the organization including customers, vendors and suppliers. Your edge lies in the following:

• Lower cost of software maintenance and up-gradation
• Streamlined license management
• Lower cost of hardware
• Better scalability of available resources
• Better post-implementation support framework
• Free from vendor lock-in
• Better administration and management of existing processes
• Assurance of maximum quality

If your project is using an open source product or a platform, it cant get any better. There are a number of advantages your projects can derive out of an open source environment. Chief among them are:

• Bug fixing becomes convenient as you would have inputs from project developers and the global community
• Incorporating security functionalities and enhancing them becomes easier
• Customization becomes convenient
• Your project becomes scalable and portable across a wide range of platforms
• Free from licensing obligations
• You do not have to worry about product being discontinued or taken off support
• You become a part of a global community
• The development costs are a fraction of conventional software development costs

The Global-Ability value proposition in delivering cutting edge open source software solutions include:

• Our developers use RAD, Agile development models for incremental deliveries
• We adopt an open approach where we share our coding best practices with our customers
• We ensure build compatibility across a wide array of platforms
• We ensure efficient code management and documentation practices
• We enforce a continuous integration and improvement framework in our projects
• We apply the best practices of testing and bug fixing