How does an established company adopt Open Source?
I don’t know the answer. Its a question not a statement.
So lets say you’re a developer who programs in a corporate environment. You’ve found some great open source tool that you want to use at work, but your organization doesn’t use open source software. What do you do? What are your options? Where do you start?
What if you’re a manager. You don’t write code, but you’ve read about open source and think it can help your guys write better code, faster. What course of action might a middle-tier manager take to get open source into the hands of your developers?
Finally, put yourself in the shoes of your CIO. You’ve been to the conferences, you’ve enjoyed you’re free muffins and you’ve been convinced that open source is the way to go. What can you, the CIO, do to push open source down upon your developers?
Thanks for reading, but this post really requires your participation. Please share a thought or two…
Jamo, 
Mike 3:02 pm on June 21, 2008 Permalink
I’ll start with this: If you’re the CIO, or a middle manager and you want to introduce open source tools and concepts to your organization, check with your developers. They may already be in the know when it comes to open source software.
You might have developers under you who contribute to highly visible open source projects in the evenings or on the weekends. You may even have a developer or two who run their own projects, and orchestrate a team of remote developers from around the world. Actually, you might find out that one of your developers runs a team larger than the one that you do ( : Interesting…
welzie 9:40 am on June 23, 2008 Permalink
I doubt a CIO is going to have any clue about what technologies should be used, unless they happen to see a 5 minute piece on the Today Show about the latest blogware.
If a developer wants to move to an open source solution they should come up with working examples that will help show their coworkers how beneficial the os solution is to their company. You can’t just talk about how great something is, you also have to give concrete examples. Especially if your trying to get management to actually try something other than a “well that’s what we always use” solution from oracle, ibm, or m$.
peter lawrey 2:17 pm on June 23, 2008 Permalink
It is hard for me to imagine an established company which doesn’t use some open source software, even indirectly.
I believe you shouldn’t start with a solution e.g. open source software, and go looking for a problem for it to solve.
Instead you should start with the known problems and look at all the realistic solutions. If open source software doesn’t come up, you should be asking why?
But, I believe you shouldn’t be asking, how can I introduce open source software. You should be asking why haven’t you been using some open source software all along and see what you can do to address this mind set.
Jamo 4:18 pm on June 23, 2008 Permalink
I wouldn’t even consider ‘adopting open source’ just like that, maybe ‘adopting open source for problem A, or problem B’. It should be considered on a per issue basis.
Mike 4:39 pm on June 23, 2008 Permalink
@peter lawrey – re: “It is hard for me to imagine an established company which doesn’t use some open source software” The United States military, by policy does not utilize open source software.
re:”You should be asking why haven’t you been using some open source software all along” Are you suggesting that this company has a problem at the core of the organization that probably stems out to a disaster? Like a string that if you pull on you uncover gigantic knot in?
@Jamo – You’re absolutely correct. But I think you missed this point:
There are some organizations out there who as a matter of policy do not use open source for any reason. They do not consider open source tools when analyzing a new project or on develop of an existing on on going product. This question was aimed at introducing one of these types of organizations to the value of open source.