Have you ever calculated the true cost of an “Open Source” project?

At our company, we’ve reviewed a few open source components for our own products, including some aspects of Moodle and Boonex. In certain areas, the integration of these has been highly successful and in other areas not as much.

As a vendor of an eLearning platform, we must assess the value of the component for our clients and the cost / benefit of its integration into the product in the same manner that any other organisation would assess similar issues.

Included in the costs are initial assessment time, initial development time and expense and ongoing time and expense of maintaining the component.

I assume most organizations do the same in most projects, however, in some ways it appears that “Open Source” gets a bit of a free ride with many organisations. It seems that the almost religious fervour of the open source movement allows companies to ignore development and implementation time and effort (and the true costs associated with these) both at initial implementation and on an ongoing basis through the lifecycle of the system.

In terms of eLearning specifically, it may be absolute hard costs in terms of salary, benefits and other expenses for personnel that will assemble, implement and update the open source solution. In some organizations it may also be in terms of opportunity costs related to other activities those personnel could be performing rather than constructing and maintaining the eLearning implementation.

Consideration should also be given to ongoing upgrades, enhancements, accountability for the solution, speed to market of your project etc. Risk should also be considered. If a vendor’s solution is proven to fully meet your needs, does it not incur less risk that a solution your organisation needs to assemble and maintain?

I’ll openly admit my bias, but I feel, in many cases a vendor based solution can offer more value than an open source solution. Choosing a quality vendor with a quality, affordable offering may be more appropriate for your organisation than constructing and maintaining an open source solution yourself.

Do you feel strongly one way or the other? Have you had successes with open source? Have you had failures? Does anyone calculate the true costs?

Let me know your thoughts.

Also, please feel free to join our upcoming free, live webinar:

Social Networking for Distance Learning
Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009
2:00pm – 3:00pm ET
Register Here – Space is Limited

We are going to cover a lot of ground in the webinar, but if you would like to discuss your unique eLearning needs, feel free to contact me at patrick.batty@interactyx.com.

Patrick Batty
Vice President, Academic Solutions
Interactyx Limited

patrick.batty@interactyx.com
www.interactyx.com