Software Engineering Lessons from Open Source Projects

The Open Source form of software development has captured the attention of academics and software practitioners alike. Though, this ‘phenomenon’ has been touted by some to be how all software will eventually be developed, many are critical about how far this form of organization will be successful. It is very likely that both the traditional form as well as the Open Source form of organization for software projects may co-exist. The position taken in this paper is that commercial projects can learn important lessons from Open Source projects. This paper tries to capture the elements of Open Source projects that can be applied to traditional commercial projects and the means by which further information can be gathered.