The other day in our business meeting the question was raised 'Would an Open Source online application help us in our long term strategy?' Looking at the facts, implementation of software that you have to develop is going to cost us time and money and if this code base does not become an asset to us in our daily business lives or help to promote our technical expertise in web development and design it would cost us in our the long term planning.
Other issues came to light, would we be willing to maintain this product until some sort of community could assist in the upkeep and how do we go about encouraging others to implement it? (Without a user base you don't have an open source product.) How much energy are we willing to sacrifice? Should we leverage it for monetary gain or just use it to create good will? Is it the right thing to raise awareness with our affiliation? These questions and more put us into turmoil about the subject for some time. In the end we just decided that without trying it we would never know and the worst that could happen is our long term goals would need re-evaluating. So as some wise man once said "Here's your big chance."
To create an Open Source online application it is to be treated like all projects, it needs an executive summary and scope so that it can be managed appropriately, this will allow it to be developed, tested and implemented.
In part, the business decided that the following boundaries were to be achieved
1. Develop an internal tool that the business could use on a day to day basis.
2. Create a small frame work around it so that we can add to the development process quickly if needed.
3. Once development had started the need for promoting the application would arise (hence the post).
4. The application was only to do one thing and do it well.
5. Once most of the bugs were out GPL the application and ask some groups for bug testing.
6. The first development had to be completed in 8 months.
7. Promote our web development in affiliation with other products ie: CMS plugins.
8. It has to use Object Orientated PHP, CSS, JavaScript and MySql to achieve the product.
You start to get the idea: plan, plan, plan. We are now currently developing our product and over the next few months we will be discussing what we have found to be issues and try and answer the question 'Does Open Source Help Business?'
Source: ezinearticles.com