Open Source Software Adoption: A Status Report

0 7 4 0 7 4 5 9 / 0 1 / $ 1 0 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 1 I E E E OSS packages make actual adoption a real challenge. This article presents a straightforward and practical roadmap to navigate your OSS adoption considerations. We do not have a universally accepted definition of OSS. For instance, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, and Apple recently introduced what they call “community-source” versions of their popular software—the Mozilla project, Solaris, and MacOS X, respectively.5,6 Such efforts, while validating the OSS concept, also make their inclusion into the OSS community a potential topic for contention. Here, we will use the loose definition of OSS that includes publicly available source code and community-source software.