Rating system will evaluate free software

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/01/business/rating.php
Rating system will evaluate free software
By Steve Lohr The New York Times

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2005


Free software, despite the price, can be confusing and costly for
corporations to use. A few free programs, like the Linux operating system
and the Apache Web server, have become well known, but most are still
unproved.

So companies often have to do their own testing and tweaking to see whether
such open-source programs - software available free for programmers to
modify or enhance - work reliably. That obstacle has slowed the software's
advance.

To address the problem, Carnegie Mellon University, Intel and SpikeSource,
a company that supports and tests corporate open-source projects, have
devised a rating system intended to reduce confusion and guesswork in
evaluating such software. The initiative, Business Readiness Ratings, was
to be announced on Monday at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in
Portland, Oregon.

The rating system, the sponsors say, will employ an open-source model with
scores determined by those who use the programs and contribute their
judgments. The idea can be seen as a software version of the Zagat survey
of restaurants - rankings determined by customers.


"We've provided some leadership here, but this will live or die based on
community acceptance and participation," said Anthony Wasserman, professor
of software engineering at Carnegie Mellon University West on Moffett Field
in California.

The rating system has 12 categories, including functionality, usability,
quality, security, documentation and technical support. Each category is to
be rated on a scale of 1 to 5. There will also be filtering tools so a
potential corporate user can specify its most important considerations.

The system sounds promising, say some corporate users who have been told
about it. Fidelity Investments, the big mutual fund company, has used
open-source software for more than two years to build tailored
applications, and the testing process has been arduous.

Free software, despite the price, can be confusing and costly for
corporations to use. A few free programs, like the Linux operating system
and the Apache Web server, have become well known, but most are still
unproved.

So companies often have to do their own testing and tweaking to see whether
such open-source programs - software available free for programmers to
modify or enhance - work reliably. That obstacle has slowed the software's
advance.

To address the problem, Carnegie Mellon University, Intel and SpikeSource,
a company that supports and tests corporate open-source projects, have
devised a rating system intended to reduce confusion and guesswork in
evaluating such software. The initiative, Business Readiness Ratings, was
to be announced on Monday at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in
Portland, Oregon.

The rating system, the sponsors say, will employ an open-source model with
scores determined by those who use the programs and contribute their
judgments. The idea can be seen as a software version of the Zagat survey
of restaurants - rankings determined by customers.


"We've provided some leadership here, but this will live or die based on
community acceptance and participation," said Anthony Wasserman, professor
of software engineering at Carnegie Mellon University West on Moffett Field
in California.

The rating system has 12 categories, including functionality, usability,
quality, security, documentation and technical support. Each category is to
be rated on a scale of 1 to 5. There will also be filtering tools so a
potential corporate user can specify its most important considerations.

The system sounds promising, say some corporate users who have been told
about it. Fidelity Investments, the big mutual fund company, has used
open-source software for more than two years to build tailored
applications, and the testing process has been arduous.

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