CommonPlaces

Why Open Source Software?

Since 1998, CommonPlaces has been firmly committed to developing open source solutions that make our clients successful.

The most common perceived advantage of open source models is the fact that open source software is made available free or at a low cost, and with no royalty or license fees going back to previous developers. While this is often the reason businesses begin to research open source solutions, it's not always the most important or the biggest cost savings.

Utilizing open source offers a number of benefits beyond initial cost of the software:

  • Strong Communities. Thousands of open source developers contribute hundreds of modules and enhancements to the code base. When using an open source platform such as Drupal, you are literally leveraging tens of thousands of development hours through contributed modules and enhancements. Your project can reuse best in class modules, APIs and security fixes that were originally created for clients such as SUN, Intuit, The White House, and MTV. Think of all the hours you're shaving off your project by using contributed code!
  • Continuous Features & Releases. Since open source software is constantly developed to the needs of each client and then contributed back to the community, there are constantly new features and enhancements to the software. No waiting around for a corporate marketing department to approve road map releases twice a year - hoping that your feature request makes the list.
  • Q/A-Verification. Since open source code is freely published and widely distributed, developers and users of the product will often quickly discover and correct defects themselves - contributing the fix back to the community - possibly saving you the cost of troubleshooting the issue yourself.
  • Maintainability. Module authors are likely to consider it a "win" if they can reduce complexity and improve the maintainability of software. This rarely comes high on the product plan for commercial software. This saves you money when updating your project from one release to another. Sometimes the most used modules and enhancements are integrated into the core platform for even greater savings going forward.
  • Reliability & Support. Most open source developers offer support for the products they develop. CommonPlaces offers application maintenance programs and ongoing support coverage. To strengthen enterprise solutions, Acquia offers enterprise Site Admin and Application Maintenance packages for Drupal directly or through CommonPlaces.