"By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code" Gartner Analysis.
"Open source in the application quality market is emerging, and we expects a slow but steady increase. The current tools are well-suited for technically adept agile development teams. " Thomas Murph
“Organizations are saving millions of dollars on IT by using open source software. In 2004, open source software saved large companies (with annual revenue of over $1 billion) an average of $3.3 million. Medium-sized companies (between $50 million and $1 billion in annual revenue) saved an average $1.1 million. Firms with revenues under $50 million saved an average $520,000.” Walli, S., Gynn, D., Rotz, B. V. The Growth of Open Source Software in Organizations: A Report.
Software testing community seems to be curious about Open source tools but still there is large scope to increase their use to reduction in Costs. Open source is collaboratively developed software that has no license fees. A community of professionals come together, work on common cause and produce something. The source code is made available to all, so that anyone can can make changes to suit his own needs. By doing so, the community is able to provide free solution to industry which goes evolving with contributions from experts.
People are reluctant to adapt to open source tools due to various doubts like:
What if the community stops existing or what if no support is available in future?
This is equally true with proprietary softwares. In case of open source tools, since the source code is available, it is as good as you are owning the software. Hence, even if support from community ceases, you can use your expertise to support it.
Can I depend on current version for stability?
Since large community of experts is supporting these tools, bugs are found and fixed in short time. The releases are made available more frequently hence you are with stable software in short period of time.
Are these softwares secure? Are the vulnerable to attacks?
Sometimes proprietary softwares have flaws which become evident as you start using them. But you can not do anything about them as source code is not available. With open source softwares, you can modify the code to remove these flaws.
With proprietary softwares, we sometimes end up with paying high price for which are not necessary in our context. Open source development is oriented at providing customization so that customer can modify and use the software to suit his own needs. Since the after installation support is available through open source community, you are left with costs to host software, train users and upgrade if needed.
We are evaluating various open source Test Management tools currently. We have taken into account tools like TestLink, Fitnesse, Testopia, Multi-Tester and few more. We are comparing them based on their capabilities to Capture requirements, Design Test Cases, Interfacing with different bug trackers, tracability, reports & metrices etc. During our study we have found these tools more flexible and easy to use. For example TestLink can be integrated with number of bug tracking softwares like JIRA, Mantis etc. Similaryly, you can use it with different databases like MS-SQL, MySQL and Postgres. It is hard to find such capabilities in propritery softwares.
A servey result on current open source tools can be viewed at www.opensourcetesting.org.
"Open source in the application quality market is emerging, and we expects a slow but steady increase. The current tools are well-suited for technically adept agile development teams. " Thomas Murph
“Organizations are saving millions of dollars on IT by using open source software. In 2004, open source software saved large companies (with annual revenue of over $1 billion) an average of $3.3 million. Medium-sized companies (between $50 million and $1 billion in annual revenue) saved an average $1.1 million. Firms with revenues under $50 million saved an average $520,000.” Walli, S., Gynn, D., Rotz, B. V. The Growth of Open Source Software in Organizations: A Report.
Software testing community seems to be curious about Open source tools but still there is large scope to increase their use to reduction in Costs. Open source is collaboratively developed software that has no license fees. A community of professionals come together, work on common cause and produce something. The source code is made available to all, so that anyone can can make changes to suit his own needs. By doing so, the community is able to provide free solution to industry which goes evolving with contributions from experts.
People are reluctant to adapt to open source tools due to various doubts like:
What if the community stops existing or what if no support is available in future?
This is equally true with proprietary softwares. In case of open source tools, since the source code is available, it is as good as you are owning the software. Hence, even if support from community ceases, you can use your expertise to support it.
Can I depend on current version for stability?
Since large community of experts is supporting these tools, bugs are found and fixed in short time. The releases are made available more frequently hence you are with stable software in short period of time.
Are these softwares secure? Are the vulnerable to attacks?
Sometimes proprietary softwares have flaws which become evident as you start using them. But you can not do anything about them as source code is not available. With open source softwares, you can modify the code to remove these flaws.
With proprietary softwares, we sometimes end up with paying high price for which are not necessary in our context. Open source development is oriented at providing customization so that customer can modify and use the software to suit his own needs. Since the after installation support is available through open source community, you are left with costs to host software, train users and upgrade if needed.
We are evaluating various open source Test Management tools currently. We have taken into account tools like TestLink, Fitnesse, Testopia, Multi-Tester and few more. We are comparing them based on their capabilities to Capture requirements, Design Test Cases, Interfacing with different bug trackers, tracability, reports & metrices etc. During our study we have found these tools more flexible and easy to use. For example TestLink can be integrated with number of bug tracking softwares like JIRA, Mantis etc. Similaryly, you can use it with different databases like MS-SQL, MySQL and Postgres. It is hard to find such capabilities in propritery softwares.
A servey result on current open source tools can be viewed at www.opensourcetesting.org.
3 comments:
This is good concept to use open source s/w as per software requirement.........NICE article
Regards
Yogesh
Great writeup. As a contributor to Selenium, an open source functional testing tool, I have also seen a lot more willingness to try out open source technologies.
I see the biggest challenge for adoption by QA engineers is the lack of documentation in open source. Normally, developers can pick up open source by just reading the source code, so documentation suffers. This has allowed libraries and frameworks to flourish.
But for _tools_, documentation is more critical. Unfortunately, this is usually the last thing to get attention in open source.
I see a chance for success with hybrid approaches: commercial companies that offer lower cost services and products that leverage open source. The commercial companies can provide support/documentation/training, but can keep their prices low and offer products that don't have vendor lock in.
This is what I'm doing with my company, BrowserMob, which provides on-demand, low-cost load testing that uses real web browsers. We leverage Selenium and the power of cloud computing to offer a better product at lower prices. Without open source, our company couldn't exist!
Patrick,
I agree with your comments and believe that commercial players have big role to play in Open source with all their expertise. We also have a customized tool which is based on Selenium and it is giving good results.
As far as documentation is concerned, yes it is a pain area for layman user. You require to have some understanding of code to customize these tools to suit your requirements.
You can see more comments from testing community on this blog at http://www.testrepublic.com/profiles/blogs/open-source-we-dont-have-to
Post a Comment