[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] Indexes: Main | Date | Thread | Author

[ba-ohs-talk] Risks in running Open Source projects


http://advogato.org/article/429.html
"What are the risks of running an Open Source Project? Every maintainer of 
an Open Source project will always have issues that she/he needs to 
mitigate all the time. what are the best way to do it?
Given the fact that the number of Open Source projects that succeed 
compared to the number undertaken is a very low number, there seems to be a 
big list of risks that all Open Source projects share that have to be 
mitigated by all open source developers
I am not looking at the classic open v.s. closed projects and the risks but 
taking it one step further to say that once an open source project has been 
decided upon, what are the ongoing risks that the people on the project 
handle on a regular basis?
Some of them that I can think of are
Declining user base interest due to various reasons
Not enough developers
Not enough funding (hardware, software, hosting etc)
Not enough product stability (not all software out there is Linux)
Security risks
Total cost of ownership is high since the software comes with poor 
documentation and is an operational nightmare.
I would like to hear the thoughts of other open source developers in terms 
of what are the risks and how they go about handling it. Please post your 
comments and thoughts. I plan to write a howto on this so that all other 
new Open Source development teams can benefit. "    (01)