Do best practice frameworks fit open source software customization?

Most management models that support software development, information technology (IT) service management, or other IT related tasks have been developed based on extensive experience with these tasks. Their recommendations are, therefore, often named base, good, or best practice. We examine in this paper whether these models are also suitable to support use and adaptation of open source software (OSS) within adopting organizations. OSS is widely used as it exhibits some very appealing features. However, if companies take full advantage of the flexibility OSS affords, especially the possibility to customize it, relating processes get quite complex. Careful control of these processes becomes crucial and use of proper management processes almost mandatory. In the paper, we first determine the special needs of OSS customization and then examine three popular models as to how well they can support this activity. The examined models are ITIL Version 3, SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504), and V-Modell XT. Our research shows that none of the models sufficiently covers the needs of OSS customization. While some aspects of OSS customization can be dealt with in the models or require only minimal modifications of the models, none of the models includes best practices for the management of intertwined and concurrent internal and external development.