Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FLOSS can be used at any or all of the stages but it certainly provides
distinct cost and availability benefi ts over commercial software in the
initial 'discovery' and 'proof of concept' stages. In some instances FLOSS
collaboration systems may be shown to be superior to commercial
alternatives in terms of functionality, integration opportunities and
scalability, resulting in the solution being deployed into production. In
this chapter we shall examine the use of FLOSS for web-based
collaboration against the backdrop of our software assessment framework
(Figure 13.1). We will illustrate each of these phases in turn, by presenting
a use-case and the key learnings from the work.
13.2 Application of the FLOSS
assessment framework
13.2.1 Discovery phase
The objective of this fi rst phase is to identify a tool to explore the
capability of interest. In addition to simply trying out various
solutions, assessing how intuitive the user interface, user experience and
features are, it is important to determine compatibility with the
production environment and the stability of the solution. Finally, it is
also critical to determine whether the solution can be hosted internally,
as collaboration inherently requires the creation and sharing of content.
Ultimately, to use these tools within real workfl ows precludes the use of
third-party hosted solutions due to the risk of exposing intellectual
property.
In assessing/exploring a Web 2.0 capability it is obviously highly
advantageous to use FLOSS solutions, as by their nature their use does
not impose any of the usual overhead associated with vendor negotiation.
In addition, the open source communities have built various solutions
that help with the distribution/implementation of FLOSS solutions. In
our case we were looking to assess various Web 2.0 capabilities and
the availability of virtualised versions of the LAMP stack (Linux OS,
Apache server, MySQL and PHP) that could be installed on a Windows
desktop i.e. Web On a Stick [3], Server2GO [4] and BitNarmi [5]. The
existence of these 'plug and play' self-contained hosting packages made it
possible for us to stand up and perform a rapid comparison and
assessment of different capabilities, often without the requirement for
signifi cant technical support.
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