Adopting Free/Libre/Open Source Software practices, techniques and methods for industrial use

Abstract

Today's software companies face the challenges of highly distributed development projects and constantly changing requirements. This paper proposes the adoption of relevant Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) practices in order to improve software development projects in industry. Many FLOSS projects have proven to be very successful, producing high quality products with steady and frequent releases. This study aims to identify FLOSS practices that can be adapted for the corporate environment. To achieve this goal, a framework to compare FLOSS and industrial development methodologies was created. Three successful FLOSS projects were selected as study targets (the Linux Kernel, the FreeBSD operating system, and the JBoss application server), as well as two projects from Ericsson, a large telecommunications company. Based on an analysis of these projects, FLOSS best practices were tailored to fit industrial development environments. The final results consisted of a set of key adoption opportunities that aimed to improve software quality and overall development productivity by importing best practices from the FLOSS environment. The adoption opportunities were then validated at three large corporations.