GCN Editor in Chief Troy Schneider interviewed ProudCity for a story on how government can be smarter about adopting open source technologies.
Excerpt:
Once potential open-source solutions have been identified, ProudCity CEO Luke Fretwell said his firm offers a short checklist to gauge viability.
First, he asked, “are there maintainers who are true leaders in the community?” Brian Behlendorf and Matt Mullenweg, for example, are the highly collaborative faces of the Apache web server and WordPress, respectively. “That’s one litmus test because they are banking their personas and careers on those projects.”
Second, Fretwell asked, “is there a sustainable business that is basing its primary business model off of this product? If there is, that’s another check.”
Third is use. The “consumption side” is important — a broad user base means there’s demand for continued development — but what he looks for is the number of contributing software developers, both individuals and businesses.
Full story: How to be smart about open source
ProudCity is a digital government platform that makes it easy and cost-effective to launch and manage all aspects of digital government operations, including websites, meetings, online forms and payments.