Strategic Systems Integration Planning of the Heelz Boutique Essay

Strategic Systems Integration Planning of the Heelz Boutique - Essay Example Choi (2014, p. 260) defined as, â€Å"software that is distributed with its source code under a license that sets out terms and conditions for use, modification, and re-distribution.† Subramanyam and Xia (2008) also provided similar kind of definition while describing the characteristics of Open Source Software (OSS). It is evident from the definition that OSS is being developed through geographically distributed software development platform and online community for volunteer developers. In the last two decades, Open Source Software (OSS) attracted significant amount of attention from business houses, researchers, governments, and researchers, as a lucrative alternative to expensive packaged proprietary software from commercial vendors due to advantages like lower costs and flexibility (Noyes, 2011; Choi, 2014). Subramaniam, Sen, and Nelson (2009) gave examples of renowned OSS such as Firefox (a web browser), MySQL (a relational database management system), Linux (operating s ystem) and Apache (a web server). Open source development depends heavily on the support of the self-organizing community, users and business clients (Crowston, Annabi and Howison, 2003; Crowston et al, 2007). On the other hand, expensive packaged proprietary software from commercial vendors is being developed by paid software developers and such software is being rigorously tested by system engineers. On contrary, OSS is being supervised by volunteer members. Therefore, a degree of systematic approach is pretty less for OSS in comparison to proprietary software.