Open Source Reuse in Commercial Firms Using Open Source Components Raises Many Issues, from Requirements Negotiation to Product Selection and Integration. a Recent Study of Projects Using Open Source Revealed Component Selection Criteria, Best Practices, and Other Related Issues

software updates, reasonable quality assurance , responsive bug fixes, and good technical support. Also, having freely available source code addresses two typical concerns with using COTS components: unknown implementation quality and long-term vendor support. Despite the open source drawbacks—prin-cipally, the lack of architectural, design, and behavioral knowledge that comes with custom built software—the use of such components in commercial software development is rising. 1 For example, network security appliances designed to do firewalling, intrusion detection , and other such functions often rely extensively on open source operating systems and utilities. As the " Example Applications " sidebar shows, many other products include open source components as well. Nonetheless, open source components raise a spectrum of issues, from requirements negotiation to product selection and product integration. Researchers have proposed several struc-tured, formal, or semiformal selection procedures 2 that suggest various attributes to consider when choosing an open source component. However, there's no empirical analysis of open source component use or of how commercial developers choose a component. Moreover, researchers have yet to formalize open source software use in commercial software development as an established practice. O pen source software provides organizations with new options for component-based development. As with commercial off-the-shelf software, project developers acquire open source components from a vendor (or a community) and use them " as is " or with minor modifications. Although they have access to the component's source code, developers aren't required to do anything with it. If the component's community is large and active, the adopting organization can expect frequent open source