| Open source software (OSS) has been drawing attentions of the world. Major IT companies such as IBM, Google and Oracle have already invested time and resources in the Open source communities. However, the development and project management of an open source project are quite different from those in the proprietary software. To better understand and choose an OSS, this thesis introduces a method of choosing one of the best fit OSS among many based on the best practices of project management methodologies.The thesis is a summary of working experience and project experience of the author himself while working in the open source communities. Besides the introduction of open source philosophy, this article also provides a reliable and effective methodology of choosing the OSS. The thesis starts with the history of the OSS, and then focuses on the unique characteristics of the OSS and elaborates how the evaluation model works base on those criteria. The evaluation process is described using these criteria. The practical part of the model consists of two steps. In the first step, selection on the candidate list is performed, using four of the major criteria. These criteria were selected because they can be evaluated quickly for each candidate in terms of project management in order to eliminate non-viable candidates and select the best ones. This step results in a’short list’ of candidates that can be evaluated in depth in the second step, taking a closer look at the software and the project using all ten criteria.In order to test this model, a case study was performed on Java application servers. In this case study the model is applied on a candidate list of27Open Source Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) Application server products, and evaluation is performed on the top two OSS servers that are identified in the selection step. This evaluation led to a clear conclusion. The best system in this evaluation is the Java EE OSS called Apache Geronimo. |
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