Community-source Development

IBM's success with community-source development provides much needed metrics to illustrate the effectiveness of this model. In community-source, the traditional means of using employees for software development is combined with open source collaboration.

The community-source approach is more focused on solutions to needs compared with the traditional open source model. Additionally, the concept attempts to capitalize on sharing code across different kinds of project in a more seamless and integrated way than traditional open source.

Community-source is the result of open source combined with Web 2.0 thinking and a strong project management component. It's not really new, IBM started in 2002 but it took a few years before it matured. IBM's community-source effort currently have more than:

• 31,000 users
• 1,400 projects
• 2,400 instances of direct reuse of components

The potential for large savings in development costs and avoiding vendor lock-in comes at the top of the list of specific characteristics of community-source development that may be particularly appealing in the current economic climate.

Ultimately, community-source allows organizations with shared business challenges to collaborate. This surely means lower costs but they have to be mindful and keep an eye on the competitive edge of the value proposition especially when direct competitors are involved in the process.