January 25, 2010 -- In the world of product development, time-to-market keeps shrinking and demand for better quality keeps growing. Open Source, which is often thought to be the definitive solution to meet both objectives, i.e., faster development cycle and better quality, is on the mind of many OEMs and product companies.

In reality, the companies find it difficult to overcome the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to make a final decision and say, "Yes, we will use open source in our product."

In the product-development process, at the one end are the engineering people — developers, architects, engineering managers — who are aware of open source and its benefits, but lack the power to take decisions. At the other end, are the management and the legal people, who can take decisions, but may not have sufficient ground-up information. How do we bridge this gap? How can the engineering team convince the management to boldly embrace open source?

In this article I will go over some key factors and guidelines to consider with respect to the use open source in product engineering. The objective is for us, the engineering people, to be prepared with sufficient and solid information to convince our management and legal departments to take that final call with confidence.

By Girish Managoli. (Managoli is Senior Technical Manager at MindTree Research, Ltd.)