Open Source Ratings System

There is a mix of scholarly discussion and excitement associated with open source software. I think all of us are struggling with understanding how to move ahead with the constant changes that take place. As well – we’re definitely torn between intriguing new functionality and stability.

In the “institutional” scheme of things — faculty have already spoken – software has to work!

Sometimes it feels like the Gartner Group hype cycle roller coaster — “peak of inflated expectations”, “plateau of productivity” or… ?

Enter the new Business Readiness Ratings initiative – a collaborative effort to develop out standards for determining how ready software is for deployment. From their website:

Business Readiness Ratings (BRR) is being proposed as a new standard model for rating open source software. It is intended to enable the entire community (enterprise adopters and developers) to rate software in an open and standardized way. BRR is a community initiative that is being sponsored by Carnegie Mellon West Center for Open Source Investigation, O’Reilly CodeZoo, SpikeSource and Intel.

I am definitely on board with developing out a consistent ratings system, and this looks like an excellent step in the right direction.

I particularly like how, in addition to suggesting the use of technical categories (usability, scalability, etc.), they have also included people-oriented categories

– adoption, community, and professionalism –

that begin to capture collegial components.

I hope the other members of OLT will be reading the White Paper within the next few days (there may be a quiz later…)

PS… I saw the link for the new “Business Readiness Rating” project first in the New York Times article:
Rating System Will Evaluate Free Software