Earlier, organizations were averse to using open-source software while developing software products. Many were terrified of the prospect of allowing others to get to know their code as well as other issues related to licensing and copyright.

Times have changed. Open-source software has become part and parcel of every software development project being offered by companies providing business technology advisory service to customers throughout industries and verticals. 

As much as there are benefits there are also risks associated with open source software development. Here are a few of those risks and ways to overcome them.

1 Security Risks

Vulnerabilities of many open source softwares are often thriving opportunities for hackers. This is because the security research community often publicise the vulnerabilities and the ways it is carried out. Also, as open source is widely popular, a vulnerability in the open source component providers hackers with many potential exploit victims. Although a tedious process keeping track of open source software security vulnerabilities and their fixes should be a top priority for all software development companies in Dubai.

2 Licensing Compliance Risks

Although often dubbed as free, every open source software component and its dependencies, comes with a license. Many terms like “copy-left”, “Anything Goes” “permissive with strings” which can be highly confusing. Also, some projects available in open source repositories does not possess any type of source license — which implies that default copyright laws apply.

Companies offering software development services in Dubai should be vary of license compliance because these might later lead to a lawsuit or at worse completely relinquishing the exclusive ownership of the proprietary code.  

3 Quality Risks

While organizations go to great lengths to assure quality, it is not uncommon for development teams to overlook the quality of the open source component’s quality.

This is because as the software is open source often involvement from the community is voluntary and hence skills, level of involvement can vary. To ensure the quality of the open source code three components can be checked number of commits, as an indicator of its level of activity the number of bugs fixed in each specific version and also the amount and severity of open bugs for each specific version.