Commercial Open Source Software

SOS Open Source Goals and Customer Segments

SOS Open Source, the automated methodology to find and evaluate open source software, has been recently covered by Content Here blog and in an interview for Data Manager, an Italian IT magazine. Below some excerpts from the two sources related to SOS Open Source’s goal and customer segments.

In “Open Source Project Filtering” Seth Gottlieb wrote:

I saw a demo around 6 months ago and was impressed by the graphs he was able to create. While this technique cannot be expected to make a technology decision for you (you need to know your requirements and to have hands-on experience for that), it can be used to filter down the market and help you decide where to invest your evaluation energy.

Seth points out nicely that beyond its easy to use layout, SOS Open Source put you in the driver’s seat when it comes to having fast the most accurate information to make informed decisions about candidates. Functional, performance and security tests can then be applied only to the most promising projects.

Speaking at large about SOS Open Source with Antonio Savarese, I mentioned that I’m differentiating among different customer segments. IT consumers ask for help to select open source projects, for tenders bidders is useful to justify their technological choices.

Open Source vendors use SOS Open Source results to make a press release about their high marks, while now some sponsors wish for all results to be kept confidential, asking me to describe pros and cons in details.