One thing I think OSS developers / projects would benefit from is (self) certification.
Let's say you write a great piece of software that has no need of updating. But Redis keeps evolving - making new releases.
You could just each release of Redis run a series of checks and add a "verification" that we support version 1.0,1.1,1.2 of redis.
But even better is if someone else does this - why? Because it solves a problem I have seen a lot on government circles - the "we cannot use OSS because it is not supported"
But if another company says "we have reviewed, tested and used" version X of php-Redis then you suddenly have a self supporting eco-system.
Webshops that care about winning tenders can say "this software is supported by dozens of providers around the globe" so if it's original user goes off line there are still people who provably have skills and experience with it.
Everyone wins
(note - I am in no way saying this is something you should have done or thought about or arranged - writing software is hard enough without these sort of long term, unprofitable, activities - it's just matches observations i have on getting oss into government (plug: http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto)
To this end: 18F[0] make extensive use of open-source technology and open-source their contributions, while making heavy use of open-source technology[1][2].
I think if you are prepared to assign some "certificate" that says
- we have tested version X of this and it's full test suite passes, and it runs against this version of redis server or it installs cleanly on RHEL 7.1
then it's a positive move
If you also sign off a different certificate saying
- we are a commercial entity that offers "support" (however we define that) for this software
then we are into a much more interesting eco-system
(yes I am looking for way more than I downloaded it and it works on my laptop :-)
> If you also sign off a different certificate saying we are a commercial entity that offers "support" (however we define that) for this software
There are companies that do that already. What's the issue? People that say "there's no support" either don't care to look, or have custom stuff that is not supportable via 'average' support companies.
Let's say you write a great piece of software that has no need of updating. But Redis keeps evolving - making new releases.
You could just each release of Redis run a series of checks and add a "verification" that we support version 1.0,1.1,1.2 of redis.
But even better is if someone else does this - why? Because it solves a problem I have seen a lot on government circles - the "we cannot use OSS because it is not supported"
But if another company says "we have reviewed, tested and used" version X of php-Redis then you suddenly have a self supporting eco-system.
Webshops that care about winning tenders can say "this software is supported by dozens of providers around the globe" so if it's original user goes off line there are still people who provably have skills and experience with it.
Everyone wins
(note - I am in no way saying this is something you should have done or thought about or arranged - writing software is hard enough without these sort of long term, unprofitable, activities - it's just matches observations i have on getting oss into government (plug: http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto)