customize a commercially available platform; or take an approach called open-source software development, or OSSD. 24 The retooling option would fail to address ongoing maintenance and increasing platform complexity. The proprietary option promised a mature system with extensive features and vendor support, but high costs and limited flexibility were major disadvantages. The OSSD approach promised greater flexibility and cost savings, but limited control over the development process and indefinite support were significant. How could the university weigh the pros and cons of these options? Should other approaches be considered?

Community Source

A new approach to enterprise application development has emerged, applying the structures of collaborative development mechanism of open source software. 1 The collaborative community-based open source model blends aspects of corporate-style software-development projects and open-source individual cooperative development. Investing institutions shape goals, resource commitment, and values through a project charter, 26 an approach called community-based open source, or simply “community source,” development.

Community source can be viewed
as a hybrid developmental model,
a virtual organization, consisting of P H O
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